Ebook Highlights The Monaco Masters Show

Highlights The Monaco Masters Show

Highlights

Highlights

The Monaco Masters Show

The Monaco Masters Show

2013 marque une étape importante dans la vie d’Opera Gallery Monaco, nous fêtons cet été le cinquième anniversaire de notre installation dans la Principauté.

Nous allons également célébrer les 40 ans de la disparition du Maître de l’art du XX ème siècle, Pablo Picasso. Picasso justement, qui ouvre le catalogue de l’exposition Highligths par cette somptueuse Nature morte de juillet 1945, peinte il y aura tout juste 68 ans.

1945 est une année charnière dans la vie du peintre car elle marque le début de sa relation avec Françoise Gilot et sa décision de s’installer définitivement dans le Sud. Ainsi cet hommage au Maître rejoint l’exposition Picasso et la côte d’Azur 1920/1946 qui aura lieu tout l’été à Monaco au Forum Grimaldi.

2013 is a banner year for Opera Gallery Monaco. We are celebrating our fifth anniversary in the Principality. We will also celebrate the 40th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s demise. And it’s Picasso himself who will inaugurate the Highlights exhibition catalogue with his sumptuous Nature morte (1945), painted exactly 68 years ago. 1945 was a banner year for Picasso. It marked the beginning of his relationship with Françoise Gilot and the year he decided to move to the South of France forever…

This tribute to the Master 20th Century artist will join ranks with another exhibition: Picasso and the Côte d’Azur 1920/1946, to run all summer long at the Forum Grimaldi in Monaco.

Depuis notre ouverture en juillet 2008, nous avons toujours eu la volonté de présenter les plus belles œuvres d’artistes choisis. Highlights est le résultat de cette constante recherche.

Le catalogue de l’exposition que nous avons le plaisir de vous présenter est centré autour des grands Maîtres de l’Art Moderne (Picasso, Chagall, Léger...). Cette année nous avons également voulu élargir au maximum le choix proposé et faire partager à nos collectionneurs nos “coup de cœurs”.

La disparition de Georges Mathieu il y a presque un an a remis sur le devant de la scène les artistes de l’Abstraction Lyrique injustement oubliés qui aujourd’hui connaissent un retour durable, surtout auprès des nouveaux collectionneurs d’Asie.

Dans une économie incertaine où le marché de l’art est considéré comme une zone préservée, une valeur refuge, il est aussi important de savourer le bonheur que l’on peut ressentir en découvrant la toile lumineuse d’espérance Dos à dos d’un peintre qui a 97 ans au moment où il la peint, Marc Chagall.

Highlights, The Monaco Masters Show est organisé en partenariat avec Mission Enfance, association monégasque qui œuvre au profit de l’enfance en difficulté dans le monde et à laquelle nous reversons une partie de notre chiffre d’affaires.

Gilles Dyan Fondateur et Président Opera Gallery Group Didier Viltart Directeur Opera Gallery Monaco

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Since our opening in July 2008, we have always strived to present the most magnificent works of carefully selected artists. Highlights is the fruit of this constant research.

The Highlights exhibition catalogue is focusing on the most famous Masters of Modern Art (Picasso, Chagall, Léger...). This year, we also wanted to throw open our artistic doors to include some of our favorites.

Georges Mathieu’s departure almost one year ago has placed the artist centre stage and allowed a rebirth of interest in Lyrical Abstraction and other unfairly forgotten talents like Mathieu. They are now once again the worthy objects of ardent admiration, especially with Asian art lovers.

In such an unstable global economy, where the Art Market is considered a safe haven and Fine Art a safe investment, it is also important to savour the happiness one can feel when discovering the radiant canvas of hope Dos à dos, painted by a genius who was 97 years ‘young’ when he signed ‘Marc Chagall’ at the bottom of the canvas.

Highlights, The Monaco Masters Show is organized in collaboration with Mission Enfance, a charitable organization based in Monaco. Mission Enfance comes to the aid of children suffering all over the world; a portion of the proceeds of this event will be donated to the organization.

Gilles Dyan Founder and Chairman Opera Gallery Group Didier Viltart Director Opera Gallery Monaco

Mission Enfance est une Organisation de Solidarité Internationale placée sous la Présidence d’Honneur de SAS le Prince Albert II de Monaco et présidée par Madame Anne-Marie Fissore. Cette association humanitaire a été fondée en 1991 pour “porter secours aux enfants en détresse dans le monde”.

Son principal axe d’intervention est l’éducation. Mission Enfance opère directement sur le terrain, avec ses équipes locales, afin de réaliser les programmes suivants : réhabilitation et construction d’infrastructures de formations scolaires et professionnelles, adduction d’eau dans les villages et construction de routes, formation d’élèves et d’enseignants, distribution de kits éducatifs et de médicaments, création et soutien à des centres d’accueil ou des ludothèques et parrainage scolaire.

Mission Enfance adapte son aide humanitaire selon les besoins des pays rencontrés (Liban, Ethiopie, Arménie, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Laos, Colombie, Afghanistan), dans des régions isolées, sans considération raciale, ethnique ou religieuse. Grâce au soutien de ses mécènes privés et publics l’association envoie 99 % de ses fonds sur le terrain.

Vous pouvez changer leur monde !

L’enfant africain abandonné, dès sa naissance, dans la brousse, porte en lui, dès son premier regard sur la vie, une ombre qui ternira son existence...

L’enfant syrien, errant sur les routes de l’exil, chassé par la guerre, trouve sous son toit de toile, une protection précaire, expérience traumatisante et humiliante qu’il n’oubliera jamais...

Mission Enfance is an Organization of International Solidarity, placed under the Honorary Presidency of H.S.H Prince Albert II of Monaco and chaired by Mrs AnneMarie Fissore. This humanitarian association, based in Monaco, was founded in 1991 to “rescue the children in distress throughout the world”.

à ces jeunes victimes de l’injustice, comme à tant d’autres faisant face à leur sort, avec incompréhension, Mission Enfance apporte, par sa réponse humanitaire adaptée à leur détresse respective, une lumière rassurante, bienveillante, soulageant leur vie quotidienne faute de guérir leur mémoire.

Its main intervention is education. Mission Enfance operates directly on the field, with its local teams to establish the following programmes: rehabilitation and construction of scholar and professional training infrastructures, equipment of drinking water conveyance and tracks, teachers’ training and school supports, distribution of educative kits or medicine, rehabilitation of greeting centres for underprivileged children, agricultural programme, school sponsoring of children.

à l’instar des artistes, nous sommes des chroniqueurs de notre temps, nous l’observons, analysant chacun de ses excès, de ses drames, pour mieux agir et offrir aux êtres en souffrance, ce rayonnement dont les aléas de la vie les ont privé…

Mission Enfance adapts its humanitarian help to each country (Lebanon, Ethiopia, Armenia, Burkina Faso, Vietnam, Laos, Colombia, Afghanistan). It is working only for the wellbeing of the child, without racial, ethnic or religious considerations, trying to bring its help to isolated regions. Thanks to its donors, Mission Enfance sends 99 % of its donations on the field.

You can change their world!

Véritables fils conducteurs de la transmission de cette part d’éternité enfouie en chacun de nos enfants, nous agissons comme le peintre devant sa toile, révèlant le monde. Alors, nous donnons à ces enfants, la preuve que leur existence n’est pas vaine, nous les portons pour leur bâtir un meilleur avenir.

Comment ne pas voir le lien entre notre action humanitaire et l’opération Highlights menée aujourd’hui par Opera Gallery ? Ce nouveau partenariat avec cette célèbre galerie d’art, permettra à notre organisation de solidarité internationale, grâce à la générosité de ses amateurs d’art, de faire passer de nombreux enfants, de l’ombre à la lumière… Merci !

Domitille Lagourgue Directrice de Mission Enfance

MISSION ENFANCE 19, avenue des Papalins MC98000 MONACO Tel : +377 92 05 32 03 info@mission.enfance.org www.mission.enfance.org

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A young African boy, abandoned at birth in the desert weeds, carries within his soul - from the moment he opens his eyes - a shadow which, over time, becomes darker and darker.

A young Syrian girl, roaming the roads of exile, fleeing the violence, finds refuge under a canvas cloth; frail protection to shield such a frail child from memories she will never erase.

To these young victims of injustice, like to many struggling through fated destinies, hopeless, Mission Enfance imparts a reassuring, benevolent response through its humanitarian actions; while never curing the cruelty of yesterday, we strive to improve the reality of today.

Like artists, we are narrators of our times; we observe the world, analyzing every excess and disaster, in order to improve the quality of our response, offering the suffering a touch of the radiance deprived them thus far.

Authentic guides transmitting that part of forever buried deep within each one of our children, we are like painters facing our easels, revealing the world. And so we give these children proof that they are not worthless; we support them to build a better future.

We immediately identified a powerful connection between our humanitarian action and the exibition Highlights imagined by Opera Gallery. This new and exciting partnership with an internationally reputed art gallery will help our organization foster more international empathy, thanks to the generosity of its prestigious patrons: to deliver a maximum number of children out of the darkness and into the light… Thank you!

Domitille Lagourgue Mission Enfance Director

Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Nature morte, 13 July 1945 Signed ‘Picasso’ (upper right) and dated ‘13 juillet 45’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 64,5 x 100 cm - 25.4 x 39.4 in.

Provenance Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the artist in 1965) Galerie Beyeler, Basel Jane Wade, New York (acquired in 1969) Sale: Christie’s, London, Nov. 30, 1976, lot 69 Private collection, Europe Exhibited Culan, France, Château de Culan, Exposition Picasso, 1967, No. 28 Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Picasso - Werke von 1932-1965, 1967, No. 27, ill. in colour in the catalogue Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Picasso - Das Spätwerk, 1968, No. 4, ill. in the catalogue Literature Galerie Beyeler (ed.), Picasso, Basel, 1968, No. 72, ill. in colour p. 107 Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso laureatus, Lucerne, 1971, No. 24, ill. in colour p. 37 Certificate Claude Ruiz-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Pablo Picasso is the 20th Century artist who worked most with still life. Still life allows for the analytical dissection of a limited number of formal elements. It is just such an “exercise in style” that probably allowed the artist to develop the research techniques that would lead to the great artistic revolution called Cubism.

As such, between 1944 and 1952, there are no less than seven different versions of this still life and skull.

A large-sized composition that included many themes dear to the artist (a skull, a bouquet of flowers, cherries in the forefront, a typically “Mediterranean-like” bottle of oil) this Nature morte is dated July 13, 1945. This was the period that immediately followed France’s Liberation. Picasso left Paris for a summer in Antibes. At the time, he was in between wives: Dora Maar or “the crying woman”, the wife of the difficult pre-War years and Picasso’s partner during the Occupation, and the new woman: Françoise Gilot, the flower-woman (and future mother of Picasso’s children), the woman who brought happiness back into the artist’s life.

After his period of using dark colours and torturous compositions characterizing the dark ages of the Occupation, Nature morte illustrates a fundamental transition period in the artist’s life. His palette gets lighter, illuminating his art with summer-like hues; the colours and lights of the Côte d’Azur burst forth on the canvas. It was at this time that Picasso decided to settle down in the South of France, raise a family and experience what was probably the happiest time of his life.

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Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Paysage au pin, 15 June 1953 Signed ‘Picasso’ (lower left); dated ‘15 Juin 1953’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 38,2 x 55,2 cm - 15 x 21.7 in.

Provenance Galerie Simon, Paris Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Curt Valentin Gallery, New York Richard Feigen Gallery, New York Stephen Hahn Gallery, New York Mr. and Mrs. Blazy, Cleveland Sale: Christie’s, New York, May 1999, lot 698 Literature Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 15: œuvres de 1946-1953, Editions Cahiers d’Art, Paris, No. 280, ill. p. 154 Public notes Pablo Picasso is probably the artist of the 20th Century. His lifework, comprised of sculptures, sketches…and most of all…paintings, runs the gamut of genres, and trends: from his blue period to his pink period, including his analytical cubism period…portraits, still lifes, allegories…

Among this plethora of a pictorial legacy, fans would have to wait until 1952 to see the artist attempt landscapes void of any human presence.

Picasso is, after all, the epitome of the “studio artist”. He didn’t feel the irresistible urge, as did the Impressionists, to run outside and paint Mother Nature, easel under his arm, palettes and tubes in his sack…

And it was only as of 1945 and late in life (Picasso was 66) that the artist definitively left Paris for the sunny South of France where he spent long, languorous and lazy days at the beach and visited the quaint, unexplored countryside of the region. But Picasso saw the landscape become more and more urban; the beaches become invaded by tourists. As if lured by an inner force, the artist returned to his studio, to his house, to his intimate universe until his death in 1973.

Paysage au pin is part of a series of 13 paintings completed in only a few weeks (June, 1953). Starting with a typical scene from the town of Vallauris and centered around a pine tree, one can spot, to the left, the formal, stylized silhouette of an electric transformer and, to the right, a group of homes. The titles of the 13 distinct paintings evolve with the master artist’s inspiration: one painting focuses on the transformer, another on the group of homes; yet another on the terrace in the forefront.

In this piece (one of the series’ largest), Picasso chose the pine tree as the centrepiece with three distinct volumes; the landscape becomes a delicate composition that unfolds its curves onto a green, rippling carpet.

The ensemble bathes in the summery hues of a gorgeous month of June.

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Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Tête de faune, 24 Jan. 1956 Signed, numbered and dated ‘Picasso 24.1.56.XI’ (on the reverse) Partially glazed ceramic tile, unique piece 20 x 20 cm - 7.9 x 7.9 in.

Literature Georges Ramié, Céramique de Picasso, Paris, 1974, No. 32 ill. p. 150 Certificate Alain Ramié has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Picasso is from Malaga in Andalusia, a region famous for its potters and clay, especially during the HispanoMoresque epoch. It’s likely that the young Picasso had spent many long childhood hours watching them work.

After he settled down in the South of France in 1946, Picasso reunited with this forgotten universe. During a visit to the small town of Vallauris, the artist became friends with the Ramié, a couple which owned the Madoura Factory. He obviously became interested in ceramic art at that time: throughout the 20 years of his collaboration with Madoura, Picasso would produce hundreds of works.

Tête de faune is dated January 1956. In 1954, Picasso met Jacqueline Roque, an employee at Madoura. They lived together as of 1955 and got married in 1961. The famous Roman mythological theme of this wildlife creature, half-man, half-goat, appears often in Picasso’s work, particularly in the Master’s ceramic production…a reminiscence of Mediterranean summers past.

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Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Picador et fille, 4 June 1960 Signed and dated ‘Picasso 4.6.60’ (lower right) Brush and ink on paper 50,2 x 32,3 cm - 19.8 x 12.7 in.

Provenance Private collection (acquired circa 1960) By descent from the above Sale: Sotheby’s, London, Feb. 8, 2006, lot 227 Purchased at the above sale by the present owner Literature Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 19 : œuvres de 1959 à 1961, éditions Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1968, No. 311, ill. p. 97 The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties I, 1960-1963, San Francisco, 2002, No. 60-188, ill. p. 69 Public notes Born in Malaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso (like any respectful boy from Andalousia) attended the prestigious Plaza de Toros of Malaga bullfights with his father (“La Malagueta”, as they were known) and the legendary “Corrida Goyesca” fights in what was the world capital of bullfighting: the city of Ronda.

In 1889 (at the tender age of 8), Picasso painted Le petit picador jaune, an oil on canvas that he would always refuse to part with.

During his exile years in Paris at the beginning of the 20th Century, right up to his move to the South of France, Picasso didn’t have many opportunities to attend bullfights. At the end of the war, the artist was given this opportunity in cities like Arles and Nîmes. In the 50s, he completed an entire series on the subject, mostly in Indian ink.

Picador et fille dates back to 1960 and depicts a “Picador” (the bullfighter’s “mounted deputy” who attacks the bull to distract it) holding a naked woman against him. The woman’s hair is done in a typically Andalousian style.

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Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Musicienne et nu assis, 30 Jan. 1968 Signed, dated and numbered ‘Picasso 30.1.68 V’ (lower right corner) Pencil on paper 29,5 x 48 cm - 11.6 x 18.9 in.

Provenance Anon. sale: Christie’s, New York, May 16, 1985, lot 213 Private collection (purchased at the above sale) Sale: Christie’s, London, Feb. 7, 2002, lot 413 Purchased at the above sale by the present owner Literature René Char & Charles Feld, Picasso, Les Dessins du 27.3.66 au 15.3.68, Paris, 1969, No. 356, ill. n.pag. (listed with incorrect dimensions) Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol. 17 : œuvres de 1967 et 1968, éditions Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1973, No. 225, ill. p. 88 Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties III, 1968-1969, San Francisco, 2003, No. 68-039, ill. p. 11 Public notes Pablo Picasso drew and sketched throughout his life. Today, his legacy is a sumptuous production that allows art lovers to follow the evolution of his work.

Indeed, the composition of two protagonists - a musician and a naked woman - in Musicienne et nu assis reminds us of Les Femmes d’Alger (1849) by Eugène Delacroix (which had inspired Picasso to produce a series of variations in the 1950s). But the choice of using a musician and a naked woman is more in line with subsequent portraits such as Le Peintre et son modèle. Following numerous versions in the 60s of a naked woman and a painter, Picasso decided to swap the paintbrush for a musical instrument, the portrait for a song and the Minotaur painter for an oriental musician.

‘‘I paint the way others write their memoirs’’ Pablo Picasso

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Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973) Tête de faune, 12 July 1956 Signed and dated ‘Picasso 12.7.56’ (on the reverse) Painted and glazed ceramic tile, unique piece 15,3 x 15,3 cm - 6 x 6 in.

Provenance Galerie Madoura, Vallauris Joseph H. Hirshorn, New York & Washington D.C. Estate of Joseph H. Hirshorn Sale: Christie’s, New York, Feb. 18, 1988, lot 207 Collection Dal Bosco, Trento Acquired from the above by the present owner (circa 2005) Certificate Claude Ruiz-Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes During the Second World War, Picasso stayed in France without being able to travel down to the Côte d’Azur.

As soon as he could, he headed down South with Françoise Gilot to set up house in Golfe Juan. He then settled in Vallauris, a quaint village nearby where he’d loved to watch the potters work their clay years before.

Tête de faune is a ceramic piece that was most likely completed in Picasso’s Vallauris studio.

As of 1930, references to mythological characters start appearing regularly throughout Picasso’s work: wild animals, the Centaur and Minotaur, thought to represent the dichotomies within human nature. In this piece, the wild animal is a hybrid creature, both man and goat. Associated with the forest and farming, it is also known for its sometimes reprehensible behaviour.

Its recognizable features include a crown made of leaves, a mischievous gaze and teasing smile. One can make out the goatee on the creature’s chin at the base of its neck.

As for Picasso’s sources of inspiration, a very close friend and poet Jaime Sabartès liked to say “Picasso can be inspired by absolutely anything…a flower, a piece of paper on the floor…His sensitivity is right there to perceive, to imagine. The rest is due to worry, intelligence, emotions and memories.”

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Dos à dos, 1984 Signed ‘Chagall’ (lower centre); countersigned ‘Chagall’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 130 x 89 cm - 51.2 x 35 in.

Provenance Estate of Chagall, Paris Private collection, Connecticut Private collection, Chicago Exhibited Paris, Fondation Maeght, Marc Chagall, Rétrospective de l’œuvre peint, July 7- Oct. 15, 1984, No. 82, ill. in colour p. 153 London, Royal Academy of Arts, Chagall, Jan. 11 - March 31, 1985, No. 125, ill. in colour pp. 246-247 Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chagall, May 12 - July 7, 1985, No. 125, ill. in colour pp. 246-247 Tokyo, Mitsukoshi, Ltd., Chagall, July - Sept. 2006, No. 1, ill. in colour pp. 14-15 Literature Fondation Maeght, Marc Chagall, Rétrospective de l’œuvre peint, Paris, 1984, No. 82, ill. in colour p. 153 Royal Academy of Arts, Chagall, London, 1985, No. 125, ill. in colour pp. 246-247 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chagall, Philadelphia, 1985, No. 125, ill. in colour pp. 246-247 Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes In 1977 Chagall was awarded the highest decoration that the French State can bestow: during a luncheon at the Elysée, the President pinned to the artist’s lapel the decoration of the “Légion d’Honneur”. Here, in an astonishing display of paintwork, Chagall has imagined himself perched on a stool in a magic pathway which is at the same time some wide river and sky of the street below: on the right, an official-looking figure offers a bouquet. The more one looks, the more remarkable the composition becomes, with the strange juxtaposition of the central pair on their stool and the landscape, like some optical illusion, changing from one shape to another according to the way it is seen. But the most amazing feature of the canvas is the web of colour made up of a mosaic of brushstrokes on which are superimposed short black lines, which turn into houses or a bridge or a bird in the sky.

Yet in some places the artist has spurned these details, and obliterated them with additional colour (for there seems to be a horse and cart on the roadway in the foreground now covered by white marks). In other places he has used only the brush to suggest some shadowy or angel, to be seen emerging from the welter of coloured marks.

The sheer enjoyment of painting and the complete freedom with which Chagall disposes the colour expresses his joy. For while the great patch of red-coloured light which surrounds his left hand brings the scene forward, when the eye travels downward and sees the street receding into the background, it is led to believe that all this is going on in a mysterious realm of the sky. The pictorial devices evocative of pointillism, which Chagall had used for his circus arena scenes of the years before, have here been freed into a conglomeration of colour and brushwork. This is an act of bravado on the part of the old master, whose mind and hand preserve the freshness of the youths accompany him so poignantly on their pipes. (Susan Compton, Chagall, Royal Academy of Art, London 1985, p. 246)

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Les Amoureux au-dessus de Paris, 1974 Signed ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower left); countersigned ‘Chagall Marc’ (on the reverse) Oil, tempera, ink and pastel on canvas 50 x 63 cm - 19.7 x 24.8 in.

Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist) Daniel Malingue, Paris Mr. Jones Bergamin (sale: Sotheby’s, New York, May 18, 1990, lot 440) The Seibu Department Store, Tokyo Sale: Christie’s, New York, Nov. 9, 1999, lot 354 Irving Galleries, Palm Beach Acquired from the above Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Les Amoureux au-dessus de Paris is a remarkable example of some of Chagall’s most celebrated artistic elements.

Dominated by the two vibrant blocks of his signature blue and red, it is a heady celebration of the vitality of romantic love. “That he is a Russian may account for his surprising Byzantine colour”, the art historian and curator Katherine Kuh once remarked, “but scarcely explains his indifference to normal laws of gravity” (Katharine Kuh, The Pleasure of Chagall’s Paintings, in Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 149).

Here Chagall invites us to share in his extraordinary vision, to step into his distinctive dreamscape, to a world where embracing lovers and goats flying over the Eiffel Tower goes unquestioned. As well as being a delightful depiction of romance between a couple, this work is also evidence of the heartfelt affection he felt for his adopted city Paris, that famous ‘‘city of love’’ whose landmarks feature so frequently in his later work. Les Amoureux au-dessus de Paris is a visual feast of colour and form as well as being a love letter to his second wife Vava, whom he married in 1952. It is testament to the artist’s sincere and enduring obsession with love as a source of inspiration and to the fact that “the themes in Chagall’s art are timeless, not confined to a single epoch of history, but reminding man of the continuity of life for generation after generation, since the earliest days of recorded time” (Susan Compton, Chagall, London, 1985, p. 14).

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Autour du couple, 1975 Signed ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower right corner) Oil, pen and ink on canvas 35 x 21,8 cm - 13.8 x 8.6 in.

Provenance Private collection, Europe Acquired from the above by the previous owner Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Marc Chagall through the 20th century had many life experiences that inspired his artwork: a combination of styles of the great masters (whose themes he tirelessly revisited) and images of life in Vitebsk, Judaism, the Bible, marriage, the family and the circus.

Chagall was a dreamer. Whether his paintings depict people or animals, there’s always a feeling of weightlessness tipping the scales between protagonists and background.

In Autour du couple (1975), the theme seems to be a married couple’s reputation and honour, a theme deeply ingrained in the artist’s upbringing. Couples are the privileged narrators of Chagall’s story. After his exile to France, the couple seems to represent the only stable social structure in existence, and the notion of the couple made Chagall feel safe. In his paintings, he often finds refuge in the concept of the family.

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Roi David sur fond rose, 1963 Signed ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower left corner) Oil and India ink on canvas 24 x 16 cm - 9.4 x 6.3 in.

Provenance Private collection Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes During World War II, as a result of the Nazi occupation of France, in 1941 the Chagalls were forced to leave Paris, making their way to the United States which they made their home. However, after Bella’s death, bereaved and depressed Chagall returned to Europe and settled in Provence in 1949. At this point he met Virginia Haggard, with whom he had a son David, and in order to make money he began accepting theatrical commissions. He also began to work in sculpture, ceramics and stained glass.

Remarrying in 1952 to Valentina Brodsky he travelled extensively to Greece and Israel and in 1960 he created the series of stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem depicting Jacob’s blessings to his sons, the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Roi David sur fond rose is a product of this period of Chagall’s life. The main subject of King David, playing his lyre, overseeing the tribes and cities of the Kingdom of Israel is symptomatic of Chagall’s deep sense of identification with the whole of Jewish history. “All the time I was working I felt my father and my mother were looking over my shoulder, and behind them were Jews, millions of other vanished Jews of yesterday and a thousand years ago”.

The embracing couple may be a reference to Bathsheba and Uriah and the birth of David’s child from Bathsheba.

The linear, simplified, two-dimensional quality of the painting reflects his work with stained glass at this time; similarly the very translucent effect of the brushwork.

The sinuous figures are typical of his work of this period, it has been suggested that having rediscovered the joy of living, post-bereavement, he expressed this with a free and vibrant use of colour and greater lightness and movement within the composition. Marc Chagall was a man of many parts, some conflicting. A Russian-Jew with French nationality, whose work quotes Christian iconography, a dreamer whose work touches on the harsh realities of war and persecution, an avant-garde artist yet unallied to any one particular movement.

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Soleil au-dessus de Vence, circa 1964 Signed ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower right corner); stamped ‘Estate of Marc Chagall’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas and cardboard 51 x 41 cm - 20 x 16.1 in.

Provenance The artist’s estate Private collection, Switzerland Private collection, Europe Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes “Throughout his life certain themes recur in the work of Chagall; the circus, lovers and peasants, take their place beside more sombre scenes of suffering and death...” (Susan Compton, Themes in the Work of Chagall, in Chagall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 14). The couple or the bride flying above the town is one of these themes, which in the Soleil au-dessus de Vence from 1964 are accompanied with the familiar popular symbols of the red sun, the donkey, the cock and the peasant bringing his offering.

This work is an exquisite example from the artist’s later work after his move to south France in 1950, when he bought a house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. “Chagall’s new sojourn in the south exerted a decisive influence on his art. The light, the vegetation, the rhythm of life all contributed to the rise of a more relaxed, airy, sensuous style in which the magic of colour dominates more and more with the passing of years” (Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1964, p. 519).

In this painting the red and blue colours enliven the village houses of Vence bathed in an intense yellow summer light. The daring and bold palette infuses the town with vibrancy typical of works from these years and particularly of those showing lovers or people close to the artist. The different themes of the painting combine in a fantastic invention which is stylistically compartmentalized - the bride and child positioned with the red sun at the centre above the town plane, divide the cock above a tree right and the peasant and donkey left into two separated sections. This compartmentalized composition as Mrs. Compton pointed out, is characteristic of Russian icons, “allowing the religious artist to include events, irrespective of a particular time or place, in scenes distributed over his picture surface in a unity of space in an allegorical sequence” (Susan Compton, ibid.). The allegorical meaning is a simple one and is set by the red sun placed behind the bride and child which according to common credence symbolizes the strength of love and its revitalizing force.

The lovers theme which is constantly presented to the viewer in Chagall’s particular Russian idiom, is here reinterpreted, the village of Vitebsk is exchanged with that of Vence but the main motives of the original village remain - cock, donkey and peasant bringing his offering. The artists strong bond to his wife Bella and their only child is reinstated through the new intense colour and symbolic combination. This is possible because “the themes in Chagall’s art are timeless, not confined to a single epoch of history, but reminding man of the continuity in time” (Susan Compton, ibid.).

O. Migdal

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Le Pont Neuf, 1953 - 1954 Signed ‘Marc Chagall’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 40,9 x 32,9 cm - 16.1 x 12.9 in.

Provenance The artist’s estate Private collection Acquired from the above (Nov. 1999) Sale: Christie’s, New York, May 10, 2007, lot 298 Private collection, New York Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Le Pont Neuf is part of a series of paintings dedicated to Paris that Marc Chagall planned in 1952, partly basing them on sketches he made during his stay in the city in 1946. Choosing the Pont Neuf as its central motif, the composition develops around it in a series of visions and symbols. On the left, a painter, with his head upside down, is standing in front of his easel while a purple bird peeps over to glimpse at the canvas. A bride, perhaps the model, or maybe just an imaginary muse bows to the artist, a bouquet of flowers in her hands. Below, a woman with flaming red hair and her baby are carried away on the back of a blue ox. Overlying his own pantheon of characters and creatures upon the Parisian cityscape, Le Pont Neuf evokes interweaved themes: artistic creation, marital devotion, fecundity and birth. Around the city of Paris, art, love and life dance in a circle.

In 1954, twenty-nine paintings from the series were exhibited in Paris at the Galerie Maeght. The project spurred an unprecedented numbers of preparatory drawings and also engendered two groups of lithographs: one inspired by the sketches, published in Verve in 1952; the other produced from the paintings, published in Derrière le Miroir in 1954. This wealth of works underlines Chagall’s strong connection with the Parisian universe in those years: “Paris is a picture already painted”, he wrote (Marc Chagall, quoted in Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 529). The subject introduced a new painterly experience to his works, expanding colours into overlapping fields. In Le Pont Neuf, the landscape and the figures emerge from a zone of open green as symphonies of memories inspired by the tonality.

Besides his native town Vitebsk, no other city received so much attention in Chagall’s oeuvre as Paris. Vitebsk having been destroyed during the Second World War, Chagall seems to present Paris as the new space where the artist’s inner reality can survive. After having been abruptly left by his lover Virginia - who ran away with their son David - in 1952 Chagall married ‘Vava’ (Valentine Brodsky). The wedding brought Chagall the serenity he needed to work, embracing new ambitious projects. While the 1950s saw Chagall working on large-scale murals, mosaics and stained glasses, Le Pont Neuf and the Paris series reaffirmed the intimate world of personal visions, symbols and love that characterise Chagall’s pictorial universe.

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Marc Chagall (1887 - 1985) Étude pour Le Champs de Mars ou Les Arums au compotier, 1954-1955 Signed and dated ‘Chagall Marc 1954-5’ (lower centre) Watercolour and pastel on paper laid down on canvas 65 x 50,2 cm - 25.6 x 19.8 in.

Provenance Herman C. Goldsmith, New York Acquired from the above by the late owner (Sept. 1955) Certificate The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes First explored by Chagall in the early 1920s as a romantic extension to the symbolic vocabulary of the paintings depicting himself with his beloved wife Bella, the vase of flowers became a perennial theme in Chagall’s art.

“It was in Toulon in 1924, Chagall recalls, that the charm of French flowers first struck him. He claims he had not known bouquets of flowers in Russia or at least they were not so common as in France... He said that when he painted a bouquet it was as if he was painting a landscape. It represented France to him. But the discovery was also a logical one in the light of the change taking place in his vision and pictorial interests. Flowers, especially mixed bouquets of tiny blossoms, offer a variety of delicate colour combinations and a fund of texture contrasts which were beginning to hold Chagall’s attention more and more” (James Johnson Sweeney, Marc Chagall, New York, 1946, p. 56).

In the present work dating from 1954-1955, Chagall has surrounded a bouquet of white arum lilies with a halo of blue, as if the flowers themselves are emanating the deep blue of the night sky. The ethereal, dreamlike feeling exuded by the work is underscored by the rich blue tonality Chagall favored during this period. “The eternal, transcendental blue reveals man’s eternal longing for peace, security, eternity. It proceeds to the metaphysical realm where faith endows images with redeeming power” (Roland Doschka, Marc Chagall zum 11. Geburtstag, exh. cat., Stadthalle Balinger, 1986, p. 40).

Although Chagall insisted throughout his career that it was not his intention to create paintings which were symbolic in nature, the autobiographical lexicon inherent in his works is hard to ignore. Following Bella’s untimely death in 1944, poignant images of her would continue to appear in Chagall’s paintings and gouaches, serving as imagined reunions between the two lovers. This sensibility is apparent on the left of the composition where lovers are depicted floating above a shtetl. These characters, beautifully rendered, are a thinly veiled reference to the painter’s affection for his late wife and fervent belief that their bond would be eternal.

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Raoul Dufy (1877 - 1953) Le Cirque, circa 1935 Signed ‘Raoul Dufy’ (lower right corner) Oil on wood 38 x 61 cm - 15 x 24 in.

Provenance Germaine Dufy Thence by descent to the present owner Literature Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, éditions Motte, Geneva, 1977, vol. IV, No. 1588, ill. p. 151 Certificate Fanny Guillon-Laffaille has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes It was at the Parisian Salon d’Automne in 1905 that Dufy first discovered the works of Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck. He was immediately bewitched by the wild, savage colours used by these avant-garde Fauvist artists.

After World War I, Dufy’s work included various painting techniques such as oil on canvas, aquarelles or oil on wood.

Le Cirque is just such an “oil on wood” piece. It reveals the master’s extraordinary technique, a worthy heir to the classic, Grand Masters of Dutch art.

This tableau depicts both a circus scene (a popular theme in Dufy’s work) and a stampede, another theme present in many of the artist’s aquarelles devoted to horse racing. The main protagonist, decked out in delicious blue, reminds us of Raoul Dufy’s close relationship with fashion designers of the period, for whom he designed beautiful printed patterns between the two wars.

Le Cirque was directly sourced from a Raoul Dufy private family collection. It is the epitome of the perfect combination of simply ravishing elements mirroring a certain “French touch” so dear to the artist.

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Raoul Dufy (1877 - 1953) Les Jeux de la mer, 1931 Signed twice, dated and inscribed ‘à Jean Floury, Raoul Dufy 1931’ (lower centre) Gouache, brush and india ink on paper 37,9 x 53 cm - 14.9 x 20.9 in.

Provenance Jean Floury, a gift from the artist (1931) Anon. sale: Sotheby’s, New York, Nov. 19, 1986, lot 134 Dennis Hotz Fine Art, Johannesburg Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature This work will be included in the forthcoming supplement to the Raoul Dufy Catalogue raisonné des aquarelles, gouaches et pastels currently being prepared by Fanny Guillon-Laffaille Certificate Fanny Guillon-Laffaille has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes In the 20s and 30s, Raoul Dufy produced several seascapes and portraits of regattas and other boat races. These works are among the most sought-after of the artist’s production, the most appreciated by art collectors the world over. With his subtle genius for blending various techniques (gouache, aquarelle, brushes, Indian ink), Raoul Dufy set out to illustrate one of his main discoveries: in 1926, while he watched a little girl running around on the docks of Honfleur, France, he realized that a person’s brain registers colour quicker than shape. He decided to dissociate colours from his drawings. He then added large horizontal or vertical bands of colour (usually three) or large spots of colour.

Les Jeux de la mer dates back to that very prolific period when Raoul Dufy produced this rich composition including boats, bathing beauties, a pillar, a beach…all of it drenched in a magnificent blue sky. We feel the artist pulling us in, beckoning us to an imaginary, irresistible universe.

This work relates to the book by Berr de Turique (Raoul Dufy, Paris, 1930). The dedication is to the son of the publisher, Henri Floury.

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Raoul Dufy (1877 - 1953) Le Port du Havre, circa 1905-1906 Signed ‘Raoul Dufy’ (lower right) Oil on canvas 54 x 65 cm - 21.3 x 25.6 in.

Provenance Anon. sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 3, 1927, lot 82 Anon. sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Nov. 18, 1989, lot 79 Galerie Daniel Malingue, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner (Dec. 1995) Exhibited Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Raoul Dufy, June-Sept. 1956, No. 18 Hamburg, Der Kunstverein and Essen, Museum Folkwang, Raoul Dufy, Dec. 1967-April 1968, No. 49 ill. in colour, p. 12 Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum; Kasama nichido Museum; Himeji City Museum of Art and Toyohashi City Art Museum, Raoul Dufy, mer et musique avec une évocation de Paris, Sept. 1994 - March 1995, p. 160, No. 35, ill. in colour p. 59 Literature Marcelle Berr de Turique, Raoul Dufy, Paris, 1930, ill. p. 150 Maurice Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, éditions Motte, Geneva, 1972, vol. I, No. 121, ill. p. 113 Public notes Towards the end of his life, Raoul Dufy wistfully recalled his early, and abiding, preoccupations: ‘‘My youth was cradled by music and the sea’’ (quoted in Dora Perez-Tibi, Dufy, New York, 1989, p. 12). Indeed, Dufy grew up and created many of his earliest pictures by the sea, in his native city of Le Havre and its environs. The sights of the bustling port city, as well as the promenade and strand at nearby Sainte-Adresse, were instrumental in the development of his celebrated paintings of 1905-1906. These pictures marked his first full-fledged achievement as a modernist, and his debut as a colourist of exceptional daring and skill.

Although aware of its limitations, until 1905 Dufy remained faithful to Impressionism. It was only after seeing Henri Matisse’s Luxe, Calme et Volupté at the Salon d’Automne that the young artist was converted to the vivid, planar Fauve style. Before this picture, ‘‘Impressionist realism lost all its charm...I immediately understood the mechanics of the new painting’’ (ibid., p. 19).

Dufy, having visited Druet’s major exhibition of Paul Signac’s work in December 1904, was already familiar with the technique of divisionism. ‘‘What I wanted to do, was to carry my investigation further than those of the Impressionists. The Impressionists looked for the inter-relationships of flecks and patches of colour, and that in itself was good. Now, however, we had something more than the satisfaction of vision alone; we needed to create the world of unseen things’’ (the artist quoted in Marcel Brion, Raoul Dufy, Paintings and Watercolors, New York, 1958, p. 9). John Elderfield comments on the time Dufy, accompanied by Marquet, worked on the Channel coast during 1905 and the summer of 1905 at Trouville, Honfleur, Sainte-Adresse and Le Havre: ‘‘When Dufy looked to the ocean for his subjects his spatially floating colourism was further developed in the isolated arcs, curves and even circles he began to use. These led through the marines and landscapes of 1907 to some remarkable café scenes of 1908’’ (The Wild Beasts, Fauvism and its Affinities, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1976, p. 78).

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Raoul Dufy (1877 - 1953) Amphitrite, circa 1925-1938 Signed ‘Raoul Dufy’ (lower left corner) Gouache and watercolour on paper 43,5 x 50 cm - 17.1 x 19.7 in.

Provenance Sale: Hôtel des Chevau-Légers, Versailles, March 28, 1971, lot 263 Private collection, Monaco Literature Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné des aquarelles, gouaches et pastels, vol. II, Louis Carré & Cie., Paris, 1982, No. 1824, ill. p. 280 Public notes Amphitrite, Greek Goddess of the Sea, wife of Poseidon, is one of Raoul Dufy’s favorite subjects.

This piece perfectly reflects the artist’s mastery with aquarelles and gouache; it also proves his penchant for Mediterranean divinities of yore.

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Raoul Dufy (1877 - 1953) Composition au port, palmier et feuilles d’arum, 1943 Signed ‘Raoul Dufy’ (lower centre) Watercolour, gouache, brush and ink on paper 56,6 x 50,5 cm - 22.3 x 19.9 in.

Provenance Salis & Vertes, Salzburg (1995) Literature Fanny Guillon-Laffaille, Raoul Dufy, Catalogue raisonné des aquarelles, gouaches et pastels, Louis Carré & Cie, Paris, 1982, vol. II, No. 2010, ill. p. 348 Certificate Fanny Guillon-Laffaille has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes We often see the landscapes and sceneries of the French Côte d’Azur depicted in Raoul Dufy’s work. This is because the artist was forced into hiding in the South of France at the beginning of World War II and spent years soaking in the ambience.

Composition au port, palmier et feuilles d’arum dates back to 1943 and skillfully mixes aquarelle with gouache and ink. This work on paper illustrates the genius of the Master who, turning his back on the large bands of colours, started preferring larger unified surfaces… In this piece, a touch of blue dominates, reminding us of a sparkling Mediterranean sea.

We feel like we can make out Villefranche Bay with, on the right, the elements of what looks like a Citadel and, on the left, the hills of Cap Ferrat.

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Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) Les Soleils, 1946 Signed ‘G Braque’ (lower right) Oil on canvas 55 x 38 cm - 21.6 x 15 in.

Provenance Mrs. Leo Glass, New york M.P. Beglarian, Paris (by 1960) Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie Maeght, June 1947, No. 13 Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de collections privées de Bonnard à De Staël, 1960 Saragossa, Caja Ibérica, Hommage à Denise Colomb, Sept. - Nov. 1995 Turin, Palazzo Bricherasio, Luci del Mediterraneo, March - June 1997 Lodève, Musée de Lodève, Braque, Friesz, June - Oct. 2005, No. 41, ill. p. 149 Literature Cahiers d’Art, 1947, p. 32 Jean Grenier, Braque, Peintures 1909 - 1947, éditions du chêne, Paris, 1948, ill. in colour pl. XII John Russell, Braque, The Phaedon press, London, 1959, ill. in b&w pl. 64 Douglas Cooper, Braque, Paintings, 1909 - 1947, London, 1948, ill. pl. XIII ‘L’œil du décorateur’, in L’œil, Issue 39, March 1958 Galerie Maeght (ed.), Catalogue de l’œuvre de Georges Braque, Peintures 1942 - 1947, Paris, 1960, pp. 108 - 109, ill. p. 108 Public notes Georges Braque was one of the great painters of still lifes of the 20th Century, and his flower paintings of the late 1940s are some of the most sumptuous and fully conceived of his oeuvre, showing the lessons of the French still life tradition of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, the innovations of Paul Cézanne and his own life-long explorations of the depiction of objects in space.

Visitors to Braque’s house and studio in Varengeville in Normandy in 1946 described it as full of flowers, especially sunflowers. His first painting of the subject of Les Tournesols had been executed in Paris in 1943 (Maeght, op. cit., p. 64), a more sombre and naturalistic painting which showed the influence of Van Gogh on the artist; indeed a reproduction of the latter’s Vase with sunflowers, 1889, hung on the wall of Braque’s Paris studio at the time.

However it was with his return to Normandy after the Liberation of Paris that Braque turned to the subject with renewed vigour, experimenting with an increasingly acidic and vibrant palette and abstract handling of the subject. In Varengeville, Braque kept a flower picture by Paul Cézanne in his bedroom, Bouquet de pivoines dans un pot vert, circa 1898 (Venturi 748), and as Alex Danchev has noted, the abstract quality of Braque’s late flower pictures reflect the study of this picture: ‘‘floral sensations rather than botanical specimens, they explode out of the jar like a rocket out of a bottle’’ (A. Danchev, Georges Braque, A Life, London, 2005, p. 235).

Of further significance in this painting are the roots of the sunflowers, which occupy the centre of the composition: starkly delineated, cutting across the top of the vase, they seem to exist outside of its glass, and indicate a further conclusion that Braque had drawn from his studies of Cézanne’s painting: ‘‘The error of so many painters is that they begin with the flower. For, after the flower, it’s over. What is there after the flower? Death, when the flower wilts. While from the root to the flower there is all of life’’ (Braque, quoted in Fumet, Braque, p. 14).

Looking back not only to Cézanne but to his own early work, Braque’s predilection for trompes l’oeil, first seen in 1910 when he painted nails and holes at the upper edges of his canvases to suggest the picture was already hanging, is here manifested in the painted green ‘frame’ at the canvas edges, which paradoxically heightens both the sense of realism and artifice inherent in the genre.

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Georges Braque (1882 - 1963) Le Poisson, 1962 Signed ‘G Braque’ (lower right corner) Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm - 22 x 29.9 in.

Provenance Marlborough Gallery, New York Public notes Georges Braque was a Post-Impressionism and Fauvism painter. His discovery of Cézanne’s style in 1907 was the revelation of an entirely new pictorial language.

From this artistic epiphany, Braque retained the geometric shapes and bright colours, and with friend Pablo Picasso, he went on to create a new movement called Cubism: geometric shapes, no perspective whatsoever, a collage of paper and figures; such were the new standard elements that would revolutionize 20th Century art.

Certain recurring themes are omnipresent in Georges Braque’s work: interior scenes, birds, pedestals… These technical and pictorial references were supposed to allow Braque to get closer and closer to perfection.

Le Poisson, was created during the artist’s metamorphosis period (1961-1963), and yet we still recognize his favorite still life subjects, proof of his quest for perfection. Braque wanted to hold on to the solid and concrete while refusing the idea that Cubism’s apparent lack of logic made paintings abstract. He strove to reintroduce signs of reality into his art.

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Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) La Rivière Signed ‘Claude Monet’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 54 x 73 cm - 21.3 x 28.7 in.

Provenance Michel Monet, Giverny André Barbier, Paris Sale: Drouot, Paris, March 17, 1981, lot 56 Sale: Nouveau Drouot, Paris, Nov. 25, 1982, lot 85 Aska International, Tokyo Private, Tokyo Literature Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Catalogue raisonné, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Lausanne - Paris, 1974, vol. I, No. 703, ill. pp. 416 - 417 Daniel Wildenstein, Monet : Vie et œuvre, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Lausanne, 1991, vol. V, p. 39 Certificate This work is registered at the Wildenstein Foundation under the reference No. 89.06.16/563/W703 Public notes Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 on rue Lafitte in Paris’ 9th District. He was the second son of Adolphe and Louis-Justine Monet. He is one of the founders of Impressionism; a painter of landscapes and portraits.

In April 1883, while looking out the window of a train travelling from Vernon to Gasny, Monet’s gaze fell on the town of Giverny. He moved to this small village in Upper Normandy where, surrounded by such a peaceful ambience, he planted a large garden that would inspire the artist for the rest of his life.

Monet developed a technique that allowed him to accentuate the fact that Mother Nature follows Father Time’s lead. This, of course, was the innovative revolution behind Impressionism. He devoted much of his energy to representing the changes in lighting and weather (depending on the season, month or time of day). Such keen interest was meant to attenuate the outline of things, to erase anything that defines and immobilizes. He focused on the weather and its consequences. Snowstorms, fog, floods, the thawing of ice, natural disasters as well as, more generally, the forces of air, water, rivers, fleets of ships on the ocean…the skies, the elements of nature…all of the elements under which we all evolve…were revisited by Monet. The artist no longer wanted to define them, but rather, to make their presence, their energy felt. The painter strove to capture the changing effects of light, the reflection of water and the fluidity of the atmosphere.

Monet did away with every possible hint of industrialization. In this piece, the artist placed the spectator’s gaze at the level of the water. The onlooker is pulled in even closer by a raft located on the right and cut off by the frame’s border. The vertical lines of the water’s reflection of the masts of other leisure boats moored nearby give structure to the composition. The red-vermilion colour of the hulls contrasts the complementary hues of blue (skies and water) and green (surrounding vegetation).

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Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) Dans la prairie, Vétheuil, 1881 Signed ‘Claude Monet’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 42 x 52 cm - 16.5 x 20.5 in.

Provenance Madame Salerou, Giverny Estate of Daniel Carasso, Giverny Anon sale: Millon Auction House, Dubai, International Modern and Contemporary Art, Oct. 22, 2012, lot 18 Private collection, Europe Literature Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Vie et œuvre, biographie et Catalogue raisonné, vol. I, 1840-1881, édition La Bibliothèque des Arts, Lausanne, 1974, No. 705, p. 416 Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Vie et œuvre, biographie et Catalogue raisonné, vol. II, Lausanne & Paris, 1995, No. 705, p. 263 Public notes In April of 1878, after living in Argenteuil for seven years, Monet moved to Vétheuil, a village on the Seine about twenty-five miles northwest of Paris. The artist, his wife and two young sons shared a house with the family of his friend and patron Ernest Hoschedé. Hoschedé, prior to this arrangement, was an extremely successful businessman who then suffered financial setbacks that led to this shared living arrangement. The Monet family, too, had little money, and the two and a half years spent in the village were challenging. Nevertheless, Monet painted well and produced numerous works that reflected his willingness to consider alternatives to the ‘high’ or ‘classic’ Impressionist style that had driven his work for most of the 1870s. His time in Vétheuil marked a critical moment in Monet’s development, and many of the pictures strike a remarkable balance between the naturalist-realist origins of Impressionism and the bold experimentation that became such an important element in the ‘series’ paintings which began to dominate his work in the late 1880s.

The present work, painted in 1881, is centered on Marthe Hoschedé, the daughter of Alice and Ernest. After the death of Monet’s wife Camille and Ernest’s departure from Vétheuil (due to financial disaster), Monet and Alice became romantically involved. Eventually Claude Monet adopted Marthe and his affection for the child is evident in this stirring portrait, painted with vigorous brushwork and daringly cropped. The family ties became even more interwoven when Blanche Hoschedé, Alice’s daughter, married Monet’s son Jean. An artist herself, her garden views were painted alongside the artist’s in his later years at Giverny. The last owner of the present work was Daniel Carasso, a member of the Danone family, and the founder of Danone yogurt. A discerning collector of the Impressionists, his collection included works by Sisley, Renoir and Maillol as well as several works by Claude Monet.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919) Portrait de Pierre Renoir à la capeline, 1886 Signed ‘Renoir’ (upper left corner) Oil on canvas 38 x 29,8 cm - 15 x 11.7 in.

Provenance Claude Theuveny (grandson of Georges Viau) Galerie Hopkins-Thomas, Paris Hammer Galleries, New York Private collection, Palm Beach Literature This work will be included in the supplement to the first book of the Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint de Renoir to be published by éditions Durand-Ruel Certificate François Daulte has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Pierre Auguste Renoir is one of France’s most famous painters, celebrated the world over for his nudes, landscapes, still life and…especially…his portraits. Renoir excelled in using light and was considered a master of composition.

A ‘‘pure product’’ of the Impressionism movement, Renoir created a very specific, characteristic painting style that was unique.

After travelling several times to Africa, Italy and to the South of France, the artist’s style became more perpetual (1851-1883). When he became a father in 1885, Renoir stopped everything he had been working on, devoting himself exclusively to the theme of motherhood and birth. His style changed once more, accentuating a certain fluidity and softness in his son’s features.

This portrait represents the consecration of childbirth. The light tones and frank colours painted with such light, spontaneous brushstrokes highlight the use of oil paint, transparency and a much more fluid stroke.

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919) Portrait de femme (Gabrielle Renard), circa 1912 Signed ‘Renoir’ (centre right) Oil on canvas 51 x 41 cm - 20.1 x 16.1 in.

Provenance Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (acquired directly from the artist) Mrs. Dübi-Müller, Solothurn, Switzerland Private collection Sale: Christie’s, New York, May 12, 1987, lot 35 Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona Acquired from the above (2003) Literature This work will be included in the Catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute from the François Daulte, Durand-Ruel, Venturi, Vollard and Wildenstein archives Public notes Painted circa 1912, Portrait de Femme (Gabrielle Renard) is a vibrantly executed example of Renoir’s masterful late portraits. The lively brushwork is accentuated by the vivid palette chosen to depict the artist’s longstanding model. During his long career, Renoir painted the portraits of a wide range of sitters: fellow artists such as Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet, affluent patrons such as Madame Georges Charpentier, and dealers including Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard. His own family also sat for him frequently and in his art one can follow the development of his three sons, Jean, Pierre and Claude, as they mature from infancy to adolescence. Individually each representation of Gabrielle served to explore Renoir’s capacity for greater Impressionistic effects. This example of the artist’s mature oeuvre displays his pre-eminence at rendering light as it fell upon the human form.

By the time he painted the present work, Renoir was renowned as the finest portrait painter of the Impressionist circle. His portraits of women in particular received overwhelming praise from his contemporaries and were admired for their sweet docility and sensual allure. The critic Théodore Duret later wrote: ‘‘Renoir excels at portraits. Not only does he catch the external features, but through them he pinpoints the model’s character and inner self. I doubt whether any painter has ever interpreted women in a more seductive manner. The deft and lively touches of Renoir’s brush are charming, supple and unrestrained, making flesh transparent and tinting the cheeks and lips with a perfect living hue. Renoir’s women are enchantresses’’ (Théodore Duret, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes, Paris, 1922, p. 27).

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Pierre Bonnard (1867 - 1947) Dans la rue, deux figures, circa 1906 Signed ‘Bonnard’ (lower left corner) Oil on cradled panel 37 x 46 cm - 14.6 x 18.1 in.

Provenance Estate of the artist Mlles Bowers, Paris Victor Waddington, London Mr. and Mrs. Peter O’Toole, Great Britain (acquired from the above, 1970) Sale: Sotheby’s, London, June 28, 1988, lot 38 Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York (1989) Acquired by the previous owner (circa 1990s) Exhibited Marseille, Musée Cantini, Bonnard, May - June 1967, No. 7, ill.

London, Victor Waddington, Bonnard, June - July 1970, No. 6, ill. in colour Literature Yann Le Pichon, Bonnard, ‘Elle’, April 9, 1967, ill. in colour pp. 140-141 Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, éditions Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1974, vol. IV, No. 01895, ill. in colour p. 251 Public notes A main figure of 19th and 20th Century art, Bonnard’s personality was shaped somewhere between Impressionism and the Nabis movement, which he helped create. The Nabis thought of themselves as prophets of modern art; their movement developed the idea of abstract and non-representational canvases.

Bonnard actually finished Dans la rue, deux figures in 1906 while travelling abroad (through Spain, Tunisia and Italy), and yet he seemed to find his way back to a certain form of Impressionnism. His love of nature and figurative art remained unchanged.

His later works were dominated by a more sensitive look at the world: one in which an enchanted, vibrant and luminous Mother Nature battles reality. Under a cloak of discreet simplicity, Bonnard’s work is really quite complex, filled with intricate, subtle nuances.

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Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917) The Thinker, 1881- 1882 / 1998 Signed ‘A. Rodin’, numbered and stamped with foundry mark ‘C. Valsuani /25’ (on the back of the base) Bronze, edition of 25 180 x 97 x 140 cm - 70.9 x 38.2 x 55.1 in Provenance Private collection, London Exhibited Paris, Hôtel Biron, Musée Rodin (another cast) Seoul, Auguste Rodin Museum (another cast) Shanghai, Pudong, Auguste Rodin square by the Shanghai Lian Yang Land Development (another cast) Recife (Brazil), Cultural Brenner Foundation (another cast) Tainan (Taiwan), Chimei Museum (another cast) New York, Ground Zero, Manhattan, Department of Cultural Affairs (another cast) Public notes When conceived in 1880 in its original size (approx. 70 cm) as the crowning element of The Gates of Hell, seated on the tympanum, The Thinker was entitled The Poet. He represented Dante, author of the Divine Comedy which had inspired The Gates, leaning forward to observe the circles of Hell, while meditating on his work. The Thinker was therefore initially both a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry. The pose of this figure owes much to Carpeaux’s Ugolino (1861) and to the seated portrait of Lorenzo de Medici carved by Michelangelo (1526-31).

While remaining in place on the monumental Gates of Hell, The Thinker was exhibited individually in 1888 and thus became an independent work. Enlarged in 1904, its colossal version proved even more popular: this image of a man lost in thought, but whose powerful body suggests a great capacity for action, has became one of the most celebrated sculptures ever known. Numerous casts exist worldwide, including the one now in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, a gift to the City of Paris installed outside the Panthéon in 1906, and another in the gardens of Rodin’s house in Meudon, on the tomb of the sculptor and his wife.

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Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) Port de Cherbourg, 1918 Signed ‘Henri Matisse’ (upper left corner) Oil on canvas 28 x 35 cm - 11 x 13.8 in.

Provenance Bernheim-Jeune collection, Paris Valotton collection, Lausanne Gottlen collection, Lausanne Bellerive collection, Ouchy Exhibited Paris, Matisse, œuvres récentes, May 1919, No. 9 Basel, Switzerland, Kunsthall, 1953 Washington D.C,. The Obelisk Gallery New York, The World House Gallery, No. 5106 Certificate Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Throughout his travels and encounters, Henri Matisse was always on the lookout for new ways to paint.

This tableau, produced with large, heavy brushstrokes, reminds us of Matisse’s style…Fauvism.

And yet, the palette used in this work has nothing at all in common with the savage, dominating hues of Fauvism.

No, this piece reminds the onlooker more of a Claude Monet or Albert Marquet seascape.

Indeed, this painting has all the pictorial references of Fauvism, but the theme and lighting remind us of Impressionism’s sweet softness.

In 1918 Matisse was travelling a lot between London, the South of France and Normandy (home to the Cherbourg harbour) where he produced this piece.

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Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) Nu au bouquet, 1920 Signed ‘Henri Matisse’ (lower right) Pencil on card 39,1 x 28,6 cm - 15.4 x 11.3 in.

Provenance Private collection Acquired from the above by the present owner Certificate Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Alongside Marcel Duchamp and Picasso, Matisse is often considered as one of the three artists who most contributed to defining the artistic revolution that occurred during the first few decades of the 20th Century, making leaps and bounds in sculpture and painting.

After having spent part of the winter of 1916-17 in Nice, Matisse decided to extend his stay on the French Côte d’Azur…a place the artist liked to call ‘paradise’.

During this time, Matisse worked quasi-exclusively on the female body. His painting style became more and more abstract, while continuing to reflect ephemeral, fugitive impressions. Matisse painted an intimate, sensual universe where oriental patterns were used to enliven his compositions.

Nu au bouquet has this very abstract quality employed by Matisse during this period. He is given the naked woman a very sensual side…a typical Matisse touch and internationally recognized leitmotif in the artist’s work during this period.

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Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) Femme et bouquets, March 1940 Signed and dated ‘H Matisse 1940’ (lower left corner) Pencil on paper 52,5 x 40,5 cm - 20.7 x 15.9 in.

Provenance Lynn G. Epsteen, New York Acquired from the above by the family of the present owner (Sept. 1981) Literature Pierre Schneider, Matisse, London, 1984, p. 148, ill. p. 149 Certificate Wanda de Guébriant has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes This drawing is a perfect example of the marriage of two of Matisse’s most beloved subjects: women and flowers. There has often been a close connection between the artist’s treatment of the female form and flowers. As Jack Flam has noted: ‘‘Matisse not only draws parallels between women and plants, but also exchanges some of their characteristics, giving plant forms a vivid sense of animation and at times virtually transforming women into plant forms’’ (Matisse’s Drawings: Themes and Variations, A Book and A Method, Henri Matisse Zeichnungen und gouaches découpées, exh. cat, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1993, p. 130).

With this piece, Matisse places the woman and the flowers side-by-side, using the latter not as an artificial, decorative prop, but as a parallel image of natural, feminine beauty, implying both subjects share such an essential life force.

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Kees Van Dongen (1877 - 1968) Carrousel, Place Pigalle ou Manège de cochons, circa 1904-1905 Signed ‘V.D.’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 46 x 55 cm - 18.1 x 21.6 in.

Provenance Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris (circa 1910-1911) Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Nov. 17-18, 1921, lot 219 Anon. sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Dec. 21. 1925, lot 59 Anon. sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, Dec. 13, 1933, lot 149 Galerie Georges Viau, Paris Paul Pétridès, Paris Anon. sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., New York, Oct. 23, 1980, lot 213 Fridart Foundation, London Anon. sale: Sotheby’s, London, June 29, 1988, lot 125 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited Paris, Galerie Druet, 1905 Rotterdam, 1906, (possibly) No. 54 or No. 57 Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Van Dongen, 1948, No. 27 (dated 1901) Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Van Dongen, 1949, No. 15 (dated 1901) Southampton Art Gallery and Sheffield, Graves Art Gallery, Sounds of Colour, 1982-1983 (titled Merry-go-round in the Place Pigalle) Saint-Tropez, Musée de l’Annonciade, Les Années Fauves de Van Dongen, 1985, No. 4, ill. in colour Monaco, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco; Montreal, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal and Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Kees Van Dongen, 2008 - Sept. 2009, No. 65, ill. in colour p. 114 Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne, All Eyes on Kees Van Dongen, Sept. 2010 - July 2011, pp. 182-183, No. 31, ill. in colour p. 69 Literature Louis Chaumeil, Van Dongen, l’Homme et l’artiste, la vie et l’œuvre, Geneva, 1967, No. 40, ill. p. 317 This work will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint de Kees Van Dongen being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute Public notes Van Dongen was an artist with a feeling for the spirit of the age and his love for every aspect of modern life is vividly captured in the present painting of the carousel at the Place Pigalle, located in one of the artistic centres of Paris at the turn of the 20th Century. The square and surrounding streets were, at the time, a neighbourhood of painter’s studios and literary cafés of which the most renowned was the ‘‘Nouvelle Athènes’’.

Embracing his new home and the excitement of Parisian life, the Dutchman abandoned his typical nothern tonalities in favour of a modern palette more suitable to capturing the excitement if the City of Lights. Van Dongen’s Saltimbanques series of 1903-1904, exhibited a transition to a more pronounced use of colour, utilizing chromatic contrasts and a Neo-Impressionist manner that made a considerable impression. Working on the carousel paintings at the local fairs in the winter of 1904-1905, these depictions of merry-go-rounds ablaze with new-fangled electric lights found favour with critics for his new exploration of colour and energetic handling of paint.

Anita Hopmans remarked that “Parisians had encountered the latest steam carousels with their bright electric lights for the first time at the World’s Fair of 1900, and now Van Dongen devoted a series in oils to them... The subject, modern and primitive at the same time - modern in the focus on the electric light and primitive in the gaudy decorations and the common people enjoying themselves - was the ‘‘means’’ he used to intensify his colours and extend his direct approach” (in exh. cat., 2010, op. cit., p. 22). The Dutch writer, Carl Scharten, went to see the artist in his studio at this time and described how Van Dongen’s “violent” merry-go-rounds were created: “He works simply and solely in the moment; he does his drawings, sits somewhere in a bar and covers the large sheets or shelf paper in an instant, one after the other” (quoted in ibid., p. 21). Working in this “direct” way, by instinct, without rules and free from authority, Van Dongen’s approach evolved from the perspective of Naturism and Primitivism and subsequently became part of Fauvism and other modernist movements at the beginning of the 20th Century.

André Brasilier (1929 - ) Neige d’automne, 2010 Signed ‘André Brasilier’ (lower right) Oil on canvas 97 x 146 cm - 38.2 x 57.5 in.

Certificate Alexis Brasilier has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes As is the case with most great artists, André Brasilier gets right to the essential. He expresses himself freely, combining powerful strokes and bursting colour in compositions that seem perfectly in unison with Mother Nature.

Three themes dominate the artist’s work: horses, femininity and landscapes.

In Neige d’automne, André Brasilier has once more visited one of his all time favorite subjects: horses. The artist found horses endearing thanks to their energy. The forest landscape is present as well, often used by the artist as a backdrop for his favourite animal.

André Brasilier is an independent, free spirit…somewhat of a social misfit. The universalism of his artwork is ample proof: he is just as famous in the United States as he is in Japan and Europe. His work transcends specific cultural references thanks to his unique way of expressing the inexpressible. By poetry, dreams, emotions, harmony or an apparently simple - and therefore accessible - composition, André Brasilier’s production is both unique and universal.

“To paint is to artistically transcribe the emotions of my life…to rise above them and share them.”

André Brasilier

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Moïse Kisling (1891 - 1953) Jeune femme brune au foulard, 1926 Signed ‘Kisling’ (upper left corner) Oil on canvas 41 x 33 cm - 16.1 x 13 in.

Provenance Galerie Berry, Paris Private collection, Japan Literature Joseph Kessel, Kisling 1891-1953, Catalogue raisonné, Éditions Jean Kisling, Paris, No. 75, ill. p. 120 Public notes After a short stint in Cubism, the artist quickly evolved towards an expressive form of art dealing with chromatic effects and delicate contours.

Famous for painting “all things Paris”, his work radiates a hint of nostalgia for traditional painting, while still mastering the pictorial progress made during the period. He travelled much, especially to the United States where he spent great amounts of time.

Kisling became really famous thanks to his female nudes - especially his portraits.

Jeune femme brune au foulard perfectly illustrates Kisling’s return to a more traditional, figurative style and a renewed, fresh take on pictorial “classicism”.

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Jean Metzinger (1883 - 1956) Miroir et fume-cigarette, circa 1950 Signed ‘Metzinger’ (lower right) Oil on canvas 46 x 55 cm - 18.1 x 21.6 in.

Provenance Mr. de Somlyo Galerie Drouant-David, Paris Schoneman Galleries Inc., New York Austin and Irene Young, Los Angeles Gift of the Austin and Irene Young Trust (1994) Literature This work will be included in the Catalogue raisonné des œuvres de Jean Metzinger being prepared by Bozena Nikiel Certificate Bozena Nikiel has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Jean Metzinger liked to create colourful patterns that remind us of mosaics. This piece is considered one of the major works of his debut career.

Throughout his professional life, his painting style became more and more geometric; his perception of new ways of composing was enhanced by Metzinger’s artistic exchanges with Braque, Picasso and Gris.

Forever associated with Cubism, the artist felt very early on that this movement was the best way to encapsulate multiple points of view. He demonstrated his desire to represent certain symbols of modernity.

In Miroir et fume-cigarette we can see the artist’s deconstruction of a still life theme. The geometric shapes transform themselves into a simple suggestion of objects that become animated curves.

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Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955) Composition aux fusils sur fond jaune (les deux fusils), 1928 Oil on canvas 46 x 38 cm - 18.1 x 15 in.

Provenance Private collection Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Private collection, Spain Acquired to the above by the present owner (2009) Exhibited Turin, Fondazione Palazzo Bricherasio, Fernand Léger, L’ oggetto e il suo contesto, 1920-1940, 1996, No. 14 (dated 1929) Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, 2002-03, No. 27 Literature George Waldemar, Fernand Léger, éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1929, ill. p. 45 (titled Les deux fusils) Paul Fierens, Fernand Léger in ‘La Renaissance’, issue 8, Aug. 1929, ill. p. 387 Fernand Léger, Issue 5, Feb. 1929, ill. p. 60 (dated 1929) Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint 1925-1928, éditions Maeght, Paris, 1995, No. 542, ill. p. 259 Certificate Georges Bauquier has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes This piece, completed in 1928, perfectly illustrates the artist’s aesthetic quandaries and his desire to revisit the power of objects and their autonomy compared to the central figure of a piece. While working on still life in this way, Léger broke with ancestral models, inspired by the new importance and visibility of items of every sort displayed on the shelves and in the stores of the newborn consumers’ society. Forever abandoning whatever subsisted in terms of spacial references in still life, Léger deliberately freed his objects from the previously imposed geometric yoke of the canvas, allowing them to float in a sort of tricoloured void penetrated by a haunting atmosphere.

As Christian Zervos likes to point out: “the space in which Léger places his objects always exudes a specific atmosphere, because Léger, as opposed to peers who simply did away with any such atmosphere, felt that each object required a specific ambience depending on its make-up. This atmosphere was, for Léger, a question of the number of values; two values do not make up an atmosphere, which is only created with a minimum of three values. However, the number of nuances must be kept extremely limited if one would attain a true synthesis.

Powerful objects need an intricately analyzed and stark atmosphere”. (Christian Zervos, On an object’s importance in art today (IV), published by Cahiers d’Art, Paris, 1930, no. 7).

If the central figure of two leaves offers a realistic representation of the objects, the quasi-fragmented aspect of the other figures gravitating around the leaves makes it more difficult to identify them. This piece preceded a wave of sketches of natural life as of 1930. One can perceive curved rhythms, swelling, geometric shapes of stylized organic material, a sort of mask…so many elements that appear almost lyrical, with silhouettes that seem to be unleashed, freed from any objective reality.

While admiring Léger’s sketches in 1934, Chritian Zervos pointed out the poignant poesie behind the talent: “no object in the physical world is so insignificant that it cannot stir in us a wide range of associations. Everything is potentially poetic; even the most infinitesimal object is part of the rest of the universe. To decipher an object’s life-purpose, regardless of how inoculous it may seem, its relationship to other objects and the world…that is the poet’s talent, whether he writes or paints”.

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Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955) Fantaisie sur fond rouge, 1943 Signed and dated ‘FLeger.43’ (lower right corner); countersigned, titled and dated ‘Fantaisie sur fond rouge FLeger.43’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 61 x 50 cm - 24 x 19.7 in.

Provenance Perls Galleries, New York Mr. and Mrs. Berny Schulman collection, Glencoe, Illinois William H. Van Every Jr. collection Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, Oct. 23, 1980, lot 265 Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, Nov. 12, 1988, lot 416 Private collection Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, May 16, 1990, lot 438 Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York Private collection, New York Exhibited New York, Perls Galleries, Modern French Painting, 1952, No. 82 Literature Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de I’œuvre peint, éditions Maeght, Paris, 1998, vol. 6, p. 270, No. 1144, ill. in colour p. 271 Certificate Georges Bauquier has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes During the Second World War, Fernand Léger lived in New York from 1940 to 1945; it was a particularly creative and prolific period for the artist.

With this piece, Léger creates an abstract composition, in continuation of his work on the human body. His forms have no sentimental value, but rather, an artistic one; this aesthetic principle actually brings the main subject closer to the other forms. These forms wind up replacing, and finally banishing, the main subject. Léger’s idea reminds us of Roy Lichtenstein: the painting can finally express itself, free to focus on its existential part - the dots, lines, colours present on the canvas.

In his own way, the artist places himself at the center of the modern art stage and delves into his own personal artistic revolution: his refusal of Academia, his refusal of perspective and of classic subjects, of any ideal that ignores beauty while seeking only reality.

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Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955) Trouville : le port, 1949 Signed and dated ’49 F.leger’ (lower right corner); titled ‘Trouville : le port’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm - 28.7 x 36.2 in.

Provenance Galerie Simon (D-H. Kahnweiler), Paris Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (No. 13681/15911/6758) Réné Ziegler collection, Zurich Sammlung Hermann Rupf, Bern Galerie Beyeler, Basel Marlborough International Fine Art, London and New York Private collection, Zurich Exhibited Bern, Kunstmuseum, Sammlung Rupf, 1956, No. 68, ill.

London, Marlborough Fine Art, Masters of Modern Art from 1840 to 1960, 1960, No. 74, ill. p. 75 London, Marlborough Fine Art, Some Aspects of 20th Century Art, 1961, No. 20, ill. p. 33 Rome, Marlborough Galleria, Maestri del XIX° e XX° Secolo, 1963, No. 39, ill.

New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Artist and Maecenas, a Tribute to Curt Valentin, 1963, No. 160, ill. p. 88 Vascœuil, Château de Vascœuil, Exposition Fernand Léger, 1979, No. 10, ill. in colour Basel, Galerie Beyeler, F. Léger, 1881-1981, 1981, No. 41, ill. in colour Madrid, Fundacion Juan March, Fernand Léger, 1983, No. 33, ill. in colour Paris, Grand Palais, FIAC, Sidney Janis Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings by Fernand Léger, 1984, No. 37, ill. p. 35 Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska, Fernand Léger, 1985, No. 64, ill. p. 65 Literature Sammlung Rupf, Bern, 1956, No. 68, ill.

Marlborough Fine Art, Masters of Modern Art from 1840 to 1960, London, 1960, No. 74, ill. p. 75 Marlborough Fine Art, Some Aspects of 20th Century Art, London, 1961, No. 20, ill. p. 33 Marlborough Galleria, Maestri del XIX° e XX° Secolo, Rome, 1963, No. 39, ill.

Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Artist and Maecenas, a Tribute to Curt Valentin, New York, 1963, No. 160, ill. p. 88 Fernand Léger, 1979, No. 10, ill. in colour Galerie Beyeler, F. Léger, 1881-1981, Basel, 1981, No. 41, ill. in colour Fundación Juan March, Fernand Léger, Madrid, 1983, No. 33, ill. in colour Sidney Janis Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings by Fernand Léger, 1984, No. 37, ill. p. 35 Galerie Gmurzynska, Fernand Léger, 1985, No. 64, ill. p. 65 Georges Bauquier, Fernand Léger, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, 1949-1951, éditions Maeght, Paris, 2003, Vol. VIII, No. 1352, p. 62, ill. p.63 Public notes Fernand Léger is one of the founding fathers of Modern Art. His optimistic and poetic style is paradoxically highlighted by strict shapes and compositions, both with his still life pieces and his portraits of people.

Trouville : le port is indeed a “typical” Léger: black lines on a white background “invaded” by massive bands of criss-crossing colours. The canvas looks like an assembly of shapes and hues. The artist produced many pieces like this in the 50s: La grande parade (1954) for example, on display at the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

The canvas is filled with what looks like spare parts; the artist seems to have assembled them like a mechanic would put together a train set. The energy exuded by this work, the illusion of an organic and unified shape both refer to an entirely new dimension: pictorial machines.

“Pretty is the enemy of beauty” Fernand Léger

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Fernand Léger (1881 - 1955) Les quatre acrobates, 1954 Signed and dated ’54 f.léger’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 118,1 x 149,2 cm - 46.5 x 58.7 in.

Provenance Estate of the artist Stratis Eleftheriades (E. Tériade), Paris Anon. sale: Sotheby’s, New York, Nov. 13, 1997, lot 149 Acquired at the above sale by the late owner Exhibited Paris, Grand Palais, Fernand Léger, Oct.1971- Jan.1972, p. 155, No. 237, ill.

Paris, Galerie Daniel Malingue, Maîtres Impressionnistes et Modernes, Nov. 1981, No. 22, ill. in colour Literature Lawrence Saphire and Fernand Mourlot, Fernand Léger, the Complete Graphic Work, Blue Moon Press, New York, 1978, p. 273, ill.

Public notes This piece is part of a large format series produced by the artist after the war. It reminds us of earlier works like La grande parade (1953) or Les Constructeurs (1950). Léger drew much of his inspiration from the circus world; he loved to paint acrobats, clowns, jugglers… The artist was an ardent admirer of the famous Medrano Circus.

In this particular painting, we see four two-dimensional acrobats facing forward. They all seem to have the same, neutral expression. Indeed, this is an example of the artist’s quest to achieve the ideal expression. Just like the painters and sculptors of ancient times strove to achieve an ideal of perfect beauty, Léger borrowed the idea and appropriated it, modernizing it.

The result is sheer poetry; their movements are gentle and the acrobats look like they are daydreaming. They do not embody the usual tension a gymnast exudes while performing. Au contraire, they look as if they have reached a certain level of fulfillment (which reminds us of the characters Picasso painted at the end of the 1930s during a very happy period of his life with Marie-Thérèse Walter).

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Alberto Giacometti (1901 - 1966) Tête de profil, 1947 Signed and dated ‘Alberto Giacometti 47’ (lower right) Oil on canvas 56 x 27,5 cm - 22 x 10.8 in.

Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (acquired directly from the artist) Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris Larry Aldrich, New York Sale: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, Oct. 30, 1963, lot 55 Dr. A. Feingold, New York (acquired at the above sale) Dr. Theodore Leshner, New York Sale: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, Dec. 8-9, 1965, lot 112 R.W. Warren (acquired at the above sale) Brook Street Gallery, London Reiss-Cohen Gallery, New York James Goodman Gallery Inc., New York Sale: Sotheby’s, New York, May 16, 1984, lot 414 Paul Denton (acquired at the above sale) Arnold Herstand & Company, New York Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona Acquired from the above (2001) Certificate Mary Lisa Palmer has confirmed the authenticity of this work The Giacommetti Committee has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Influenced by the post-war existentialist movement and spurred on by his own reworking of themes from his Surrealist past, Giacometti presents the viewer with a dramatic and haunting visage that has been suggested in the exhibition catalogue for Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966, held at the Kunsthalle Vienna & Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh in 1996, to be that of his younger brother, Diego. The picture captures a particular sentiment that the artist once expressed in a Surrealist prose poem: “The human face is as strange to me as a countenance, which, the more one looks at it, the more it closes itself off and escapes by the steps of unknown stairways” (quoted in Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. & San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, 1988-89, p. 37).

Throughout his career, Giacometti used Diego as a model. In nearly all of his works, whether paintings or sculpture, Giacometti’s approach was consistent: the model is frontally posed and deprived of all attributes that might convey information about personality or social status. Typically, the model engages the viewer directly and holds the viewer’s gaze. Thus Tête de profil is unique in that it is executed in profile. Characterized by a frenetic energy, the strongly worked head appears like an apparition, emerging from the obscure haze of brown-grey paint.

Tête de profil foreshadows Giacometti’s ‘‘Black Head’’ paintings which he worked on in the 1960s. In the paintings and sculpture of this period, he explored the psychological complexity of objectively representing someone with whom he was intimately familiar and nowhere is this more apparent than in the artist’s representations of his brother. Rather poignantly, Bonnefoy observed that “in the portraits of Diego one even senses considerable disquiet, as well as great energy… In the presence of someone who is, as it were, his double, Giacometti more than ever is witness to the mystery of existence, like Hamlet thinking of Yorick, in front of a skull in the dust’’ (Alberto Giacometti (exhibition catalogue), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1996, pp. 426 & 432).

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Salvador Dalí (1904 - 1989) Rhinocéros cosmique (Chair de poule rhinocérontique), 1956 Signed ‘Dalí’ (on the base); stamped with the foundry mark ‘Valsuani’ (on the base) Bronze and golden sea urchins, edition of 8 + 4 EA + 2 HCM + 1 HCF 403 x 206 x 65 cm - 158.7 x 81.1 x 25.6 in.

Certificate Nicolas R. and Robert P. Descharnes have confirmed the authenticity of this work under the reference No. o429 Public notes Salvador Dalí is considered one of Surrealism’s most brilliant representatives, as well as one of the most talented painters of the 20th Century. But Dalí is also famous the world over for his sculptures, such as his Rhinocéros cosmique dating from 1956. The rhinoceros, a formidable creature indeed, has always been the subject of artistic predilection since Prehistoric times.

Dalí liked to play with references to the granular aspect of the animal’s epidermis, and titles of some of his paintings, sculptures and sketches include interesting rhino-connotations such as Chair de poule rhinocérontique, Rhinocéros habillé en dentelles, or the more sober Le Rhinocéros.

This sculpture in bronze, inspired by Alfred Dürer’s famous woodcut, shows a rhinoceros bearing a stack of sea urchins on its back. The monolith-like shape symbolizes the dread a drop of water feels of losing its beauty and purity during its first fall. Numbed with fright, this original drop experiences the first shivers of time and the first appearance of goose bumps on its surface.

A few years after its creation, during Alain Bosquet’s preparation of Interviews with Salvador Dalí - the artist told the author that his dream was to see this monumental statue erected in Paris “precisely in the same spot where, on the Trocadero Plaza, there once stood the bronze sculpture of an effigy to a rhinoceros. And I want it to be a cosmic rhinoceros.”

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Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Untitled, 1972 Signed ‘Miró’ and dedicated (on the reverse) Gouache and watercolour on paper 66 x 102 cm - 26 x 40.2 in.

Provenance Sala Gaspar, Barcelona (acquired directly from the artist) Private collection, thence by descent Certificate Jacques Dupin from ADOM (Association pour la défense de l’œuvre de Joan Miró) has confirmed the authenticity of the work Public notes The present work, with its exuberant black brushstrokes, bold lines and striking colours, is a wonderful example of the joyful, childlike abstraction Miró aspired to during the 1960s. Abandoning a more realistic and figurative approach, Miró developed a highly personalized vocabulary of signs, relishing whimsical and ambiguous shapes that take form in shifting and delightful ways. As Sidra Stich suggested, ‘‘the art of Joan Miró heralds a deep grasp of the marvellous. Beyond childlike innocence, romantic fantasy and poetic reverie, the marvellous for Miró connotes a cosmic perspective and focus on the dynamics of creation” (Sidra Stich, Joan Miró: the Development of a Sign Language (exhibition catalogue), Washington University, St. Louis, 1980, p. 8).

These themes were deeply explored in Miró’s works on paper. During the 1960s and 1970s, Miró experimented with painting on a wide variety of supports, including canvas fragments, sack cloth, wooden boards and masonite that were scored, burned and broken, newsprint, and even touristic paintings from local antique shops. During World War II, the artist had painted on what little canvas he could gather and turned his attention primarily to creating works on paper.

The present work, executed in 1961, harks back to his era of experimentation, but builds on his previous work by incorporating a more playful experience for the viewer. Jacques Dupin noted that “Miró emphasised the painting’s structure and pared its gesture to the bone. He emphasised contrast, and revealed the armature and the framework...[these works] seem to live outside time, and outside the cycles and pendulum effects we are accustomed to finding in his work. Their existence is abrupt and detached, like death-stones, swirls of sand in a desert, or cliffs jutting into the sea” (Jacques Dupin, Miró, Barcelona, 1993, pp. 351-52).

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Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Personnage, oiseaux, 1971-1976 Signed ‘Miró’ (lower right corner); dated and titled ‘27/VII/76. Personnage, oiseaux 12/XII/76./30/VI/71’ (on the reverse) Watercolour, colour crayon, brush and India ink on paper 63 x 42 cm - 24.8 x 16.5 in.

Provenance Pilar Juncosa, Palma (the artist’s widow) Sale: Sotheby’s, Madrid, Dec. 9, 1986, lot 27 Anon. sale: Sotheby’s, London, Nov. 30, 1994, lot 242 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Certificate ADOM (Association pour la défense de l’œuvre de Joan Miró) has confirmed the authenticity of the work Public notes As of 1960, Miró decided to radically reduce the number of elements in his paintings, focusing only on points and coloured lines projected onto a monochromatic background.

Such is the case for Personnage, oiseaux, a piece in which the artist explores the possibilities of movement in a two-dimensional space.

There is no horizon, no indication of depth; shapes simply float in infinity. The energy suggested by the red circle is enhanced by the neutral backdrop, decorated with graphic elements painted in Indian ink. The light touches of ink and coloured crayon add vitality to the ensemble and suggest depth. Miró’s composition is a cosmic space where dots and lines roam about at will.

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Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Femmes dans la nuit, 14 april 1977 Signed ‘Miró’ (lower right corner); dated and titled ‘14/IV/77 Femmes dans la nuit’ (on the reverse) Pastel, pencil and chalk on board 24 x 45,5 cm - 9.4 x 17.9 in.

Provenance Galeria Mayoral, Barcelona Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco Certificate Jacques Dupin from ADOM (Association pour la défense de l’œuvre de Joan Miró) has confirmed the authenticity of the work Joan Pussyet Miró and the Successió Miró have confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes André Breton, a major figure of Surrealistic art, used to say “experimenting is not just observing passively but rather inventing perpetually”. This is exactly what Miró did throughout his career. He never stopped throwing himself into new pictorial adventures, whether that be trying his artistic hand at paper, wood, cardboard… or sculpting and ceramic art.

In 1960, Miró declared in an interview with a French journalist that, in his studio in Palma de Mallorca: “I’m quite calm on the outside, but on the inside, I’m extremely tormented”.

In Femmes dans la nuit, the apparent simplicity and naivety are merely foils behind which lurks all the complexity of a universe that is both serene and agitated. The two women on the left have been more meticulously drawn than the third woman, sketched more impulsively. The right part of the tableau, “the night”, which was meant to be a sort of background, becomes a character in its own right, occupying the canvas with as much intensity as the women protagonists.

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Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Femmes, oiseaux, 10 Sept. 1977 Signed ‘Miró’ (lower right corner); countersigned, titled and dated (on the reverse) Wax crayon on sand paper 33 x 22 cm - 13 x 8.7 in.

Provenance The artist’s estate Private collection, Europe (early 1980s) Certificate Jacques Dupin from ADOM (Association pour la défense de l’œuvre de Joan Miró) has confirmed the authenticity of the work Public notes Miró was a painter, sculptor, engraver and ceramic artist. The Spaniard is one of the founding fathers of Surrealism. His works are examples of his keen interest in the subconscious, in the way a child thinks and, of course, in his homeland, Catalonia.

Matisse was greatly inspired by women. His works speak volumes about the male-female relationship, as well as about eroticism in general. Furthermore, Miró refused to limit himself to simple representations and ancient canons of beauty and the body, but rather, tried to represent them from within. He was able to extract from his works - mainly composed of short lines and soft colours - a sort of fullness and softness; the artist’s way of depicting women in general.

This pattern of a woman and a bird are very popular throughout Miró’s works. In Catalonia, bird (“ocell”) is also the nickname for “male” and is often used by the artist in his attempt to add a touch of eroticism with a hint of naivety.

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Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Untitled (Essencies de la terra), 7 Oct. 1968 Signed, dated and dedicated ‘Miró, 7/X/68 a Manuel del Arco afectuosamente’ (lower right) Pastel and coloured crayons on paper 49 x 37,5 cm - 19.3 x 14.8 in.

Certificate Jacques Dupin from ADOM (Association pour la défense de l’œuvre de Joan Miró) has confirmed the authenticity of the work Public notes Catalonia, and more specifically, the family farm in Mont-Roig Del Camp, is omnipresent in Miró’s lifework.

He spent time in this coastal village when he was young and loved it so much that he would spend six months there every year for the rest of his life.

From this magical place the artist drew inspiration and emotions, as well as his views on life and death. So many of the artist’s memories originate in this paradise; memories that would, over time, find their way into Miró’s masterpiece.

In Untitled (Essencies de la terra), the vegetation, arid climate, stifling Catalonian heat and star-studded skies, but also…the local characters, were all carefully composed by the master painter.

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Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) Femmes et oiseau dans la nuit, 28 Nov. 1946 Signed, titled and dated ‘Miró 28.11.46’ (on the reverse) Gouache and sealing wax on canvas 65 x 50 cm - 25.6 x 19.7 in.

Provenance Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York James Goodman Gallery, New York Perls Galleries, New York Russeck Gallery, Palm Beach Acquired from the above by the previous owner (2004) Literature Jacques Dupin, Joan Miró: Life and Work, T & H, London, 1962, No. 678, ill. p. 551 (as dating from 1945) Jacques Dupin & Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, Catalogue raisonné, Paintings, Galerie Lelong, Paris, 2001, vol.

III, No. 804, ill. in colour p. 113 Public notes When Miró painted this canvas in 1946, he was at the height of his international acclaim. The previous year, the New York dealer Pierre Matisse had exhibited the artist’s celebrated series of Constellations to enormous praise.

The demand for Miró’s work in the United States had become so great that in August 1946 Pierre Matisse offered to purchase the artist’s entire production of 1942-46 and to finance him for the next two years. Better yet, Miró was invited to the United States to create what would be his first public commission - a mural for the Terrace Plaza Hotel in Cincinnati. What the public, his dealer and his critics recognised in Miró’s paintings from this era was a certain zeal and optimism that was in sharp contrast to the sombre mood of post-war Europe. Femmes et oiseau dans la nuit is a composition populated by Miró’s recognisable Surrealist characters - two highly stylised human figures and a bird suspended above them.

Jacques Dupin wrote about the artist’s production from 1946: ‘‘Although the handwriting will tend to become freer and invention more flexible, nonetheless his works of 1946 follow the lines established in the paintings of the two preceding years. [...] we find the confirmation and the continuing development of an art which becomes progressively less capricious, less anxious, and more self-assured. All the paintings of this year are characterized by the abandonment of the purely rhythmic elements and signs that abounded in 1945. The artist concentrates on his figures and animals, now making them more and more unlike each other, even odder and more humorous in character...(a) renewed passion for artistic materials produces grounds of great richness and animation’’ (Jacques Dupin, op. cit., 1962, p. 382).

The present work amply demonstrates the vigour of Miró’s experimentation with new materials. His exploration of painting on irregularly shaped pieces of canvas resulted in a number of works executed between 1944 and 1945. They are recognised for their lively animation and humour, populated with a profusion of figures and signs.

Dupin held them in high regard, commenting that ‘‘The artist’s imagination roams freely on them, and he improvises with much greater ease and casualness. The absence of the easel seems to have freed him from the usual constraints... The gestures that create them are swift and sure’’ (ibid., p. 378).

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Jean Arp (1886 - 1966) En songe, 1937 Original plaster, unique piece 36,1 x 19,2 x 23 cm - 14.2 x 7.6 x 9.1 in.

Certificate Hervé Cappelli has confirmed the authenticity of the work Public notes Jean Arp was one of the founding fathers of the Dada movement in 1916 in Zurich alongside Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball. This artistic movement preached the rejection of all ideological and aesthetic conventions, and coined the phrase: ‘tabula rasa’.

Jean Arp created his first works in plaster and marble in 1930. This sculpture, En songe, is a unique piece, indeed: it’s a plaster that served as the model for casting the related series of bronzes.

We can see that the artist began shaping round and abstract figures, so characteristic of his work that seems to flirt with the surrealism he so cherished. ‘‘I like mistakes because they give more accurate results’’.

Extract from Jours effeuillés, Poems, 1920-1965

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André Lanskoy (1902 - 1976) Les Joies des autres, 1960 Signed ‘Lanskoy’ (lower right); titled in French and Russian, inscribed and dated ‘les joies des autres Roquereine 60’ (on the reverse) Oil on canvas 97 x 146,4 cm - 38.2 x 57.6 in.

Provenance Galerie Louis Carré & Cie., Paris Svensk-Franska Galleriet, Stockholm Acquired by the parents of the previous owner (in the 1960s) Anon. sale: Christie’s London, Feb. 5, 2004, lot 114 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Literature This work will be included in the forthcoming André Lanskoy Catalogue raisonné being prepared by André Schoeller Public notes André Lanskoy was born into Russian nobility and forced to flee the homeland during the revolution in 1917.

He is considered one of the major figures of Lyrical Abstraction, a movement started in 1945. Paul Klee’s artistic universe was the detonator for Lanskoy who loved the explosive colours, the combination of both abstract and figurative elements…

In Les joies des autres, as with other paintings of the period, the work’s enigma doesn’t reside in what is presented or represented, but rather, in the pictorial choices themselves: matter and colour are the stars. The painting has been done by instinct, void of any theory, on the brink of Tachism: Lanskoy depicts an atmosphere that actually does away with the main subject.

For Lanskoy, every painting had its own purpose. He refused to paint anything seen before or merely ornamental, decorative. He strove to find a new system of representation.

“If you ever see something other than a painting on canvas…it’s always a trompe-l’œil. But it is the onlooker who is guilty of deceiving his own eye…and not his eye which does the misleading. Every single shape and colour already exists; one can only find new ways of representing them.”

André Lanskoy

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Georges Mathieu (1921 - 2012) Hudson bay, 1963 Signed, dated and titled ‘Mathieu 63 Hudson bay’ (on the stretcher) Oil on canvas 97 x 194 cm - 38.2 x 76.4 in.

Provenance Dominion Gallery, Montréal Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Montréal, Dominion Gallery, Mathieu, 1963 Literature Vie des Arts (Montréal), Issue 31, summer 1963, ill. p. 32 Public notes Considered one of the founding fathers of Lyrical Abstraction, Georges Mathieu passed away in June, 2012 at the age of 91.

Hudson bay dates back to 1963, the year of a major retrospective of the artist’s lifework at the Paris Museum of Modern Art. It was this exhibit that consecrated Georges as the quasi-official French Contemporary artist for more than 20 years. The French government commissioned several pieces such as the famous 10 francs coin (exhibited throughout the world and which garnered much acclaim).

As of 1980, the enthusiasm on the Lyrical Abstraction movement has slowed down. However, today Georges Mathieu has once again taken centre stage. His market value has been multiplied by three over the last ten years and word of his death brought fresh attention to his work. His pure, streamlined graphics, his preference for oil on canvas and his classic renderings are once again receiving praise.

Like with many Abstract Expressionists, Mathieu’s work has gained popularity with Asian art lovers…after all, isn’t there a certain oriental touch to his graphic expression?

Hudson bay is a large-format piece that includes all of the main elements that made Mathieu a success: solid, stable lines, a perfect balance in tone and a talent for lyricism. The title refers to one of the East Coast’s most famous bays and reveals one of the artist’s idiosyncrasies: Mathieu loved to paint scenes of places far-removed from the artist’s reality.

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Bernard Buffet (1928 - 1999) Le Cirque, la parade, 1968 Signed ‘Bernard Buffet’ (upper left) Mixed media on paper laid down on canvas 69,8 x 101,8 cm - 27.5 x 40 in.

Certificate Maurice Garnier has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Bernard Buffet was definitely an exceptional and enigmatic artist, indeed. His precise and powerful style sets him apart from his contemporary art peers.

A number of canvases created by Bernard Buffet around the theme of the circus show his interest for this specific subject. Clowns, their stories and the world around them have definitely aroused the artist’s curiosity. The artist’s tableaus depicting clowns are definitely the most popular pieces and the most sought-after by art collectors the world over: the emblematic figures of the artist’s lifework.

Through this body of word, Buffet stages a typical circus performance. Acrobats take centre stage in the performance, along with clowns. And giving a clown such a prominent position in his work, the Master highlights his passion and interest for these intriguing characters.

But the clown is also a symbol of the mask behind which each individual can hide, like some sort of protection. ‘‘He discovered painting as we found religion, he found a land of refuge, his workshop.

Which of anxiety or serenity will accompany him?

Again, a useless question ...

We always talk too much’’ Annabel Buffet, 1984

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Bernard Buffet (1928 - 1999) Villa normande, 1991 Signed ‘Bernard Buffet’ (upper right) and dated ‘1991’ (upper left) Oil on canvas 81 x 116 cm - 31.9 x 45.7 in.

Certificate Maurice Garnier has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Bernard Buffet has a unique style all his own. He borrows his themes from the most classical traditions while deliberately restricting his artwork to an academic form.

In 1991, the artist produced the prototype of a French stamp worth 25.70 French francs. The French painter likes to diversify the themes he uses to paint. An expressionist artist, Buffet is also a theatre set designer and illustrator.

Bernard Buffet hates routine. With his wife Annabel and their children, the family lives to the beat of the artist’s various moods…The family moves to a new house every seven years. After each time the couple is separated, it’s rumoured that they meet up in a place that Bernard Buffet has loved…Saint-Tropez, La Provence, Brittany or Normandy…

This Villa normande, painted in 1991, was inspired by one of these reunions in Normandy.

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Bernard Buffet (1928 - 1999) Papillon vert, 1998 Signed ‘Bernard Buffet’ (upper centre) and dated ‘1998’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 50 x 65 cm - 19.7 x 25.6 in.

Provenance Galerie Maurice Garnier, Paris Certificate Maurice Garnier has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Animals have always been an essential ingredient in Bernard Buffet’s works. Birds, insects, monkeys and owls are among the artist’s favorite subjects and appear in a myriad of tableaus as “co-stars” having stolen the spotlight from their human cohorts.

For example, in one series inspired by Jules Verne’s masterpiece 20,000 Leagues under the sea, the artist produced a veritable showcase of sharks, shells and other octopuses (1989).

In a series of paintings inspired by Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1988), the protagonist’s horse and Sancho Panza’s mule are essential components to the composition.

Papillon vert is a wonderful example of the majesty of such creatures; the artist didn’t paint animals with the same cruelty he painted humans. Buffet treated his subject with great respect and admiration…no anger, just beauty.

106

Yves Klein (1928 - 1962) Victoire de Samothrace, 1962-1973 Numbered ‘/ 175’ (lower back) Pigment in synthetic resin on plaster with a metal and stone base, edition of 175 + 25 AP H: 52 cm - H: 20.5 in.

Public notes It was back in 1956 that Klein perfected his famous “International Klein Blue” (or Ultramarine blue), better known in art circles as “IKB”. By combining an ultramarine pigment with a synthetic resin called ‘‘Rhodopas’’, the artist discovered, with the help of Edouard Adam, a Parisian art merchant, a new procedure that preserves a pigment’s brilliance. Before such a discovery, pigments used to lose their intensity when mixed with oil. This intense blue (a synthetic variation of Lapus Lazuli which had been used throughout time to depict the sky and the tunics worn by the Madonnas of the Middle Ages) would soon become world famous under its acronym: IKB. This is the exact same blue used in Victoire de Samothrace, itself a remake of the famous Greek sculpture representing the Goddess Niké, who personified victory. The original can be admired at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

108

Arman (1928 - 2005) Untitled, 1972 Signed ‘Arman’ (lower back) Inclusion of violins in Plexiglas, unique piece 100 x 81 x 11 cm - 39.4 x 31.9 x 4.3 in.

Provenance Kallenbach Fine Art, Munich Acquired from the above by the previous owner (1982) Private collection, Europe Certificate This work is registered in the Denyse Durand-Ruel Archives under the reference No. 9690 Public notes In 1960, Arman joined the Nouveau Realism movement with Yves Klein and Martial Raysse and started using natural materials in his work. His style evokes the inevitable renaissance and recycling of objects thought to have served their purpose or become obsolete.

Arman developed this process of inclusion in 1959, showing an extraordinary perspicacity in his manipulation of materials such as cardboard, carrier and colour.

In Untitled, broken remnants of violins (‘victims’ of one of the artist’s famous ‘rages’), is an example of inclusion in plexiglass. It perfectly illustrates the artist’s modus operandi in the destruction and reconstruction of an object.

Arman proves that, despite partial destruction, violins exude an identity strong enough to withstand and survive the violence of the accident. ‘‘Read the future in the viscera of things’’ Arman

110

François-Xavier Lalanne (1927 - 2008) Singe avisé, 2005 Signed and numbered ‘F x L / 8’ and stamped with the foundry mark ‘bacquel fd’ (on the back) Patinated bronze, edition of 8 20 x 14,5 x 15 cm - 7.9 x 5.7 x 5.9 in.

Public notes The lifework of François-Xavier Lalanne includes a playful menagerie of all sorts of animal sculptures striking very formal, stylized poses that immediately remind us of ancient Egyptian art, or Pompon…or even Brancusi (whose studio was right next to Pompon’s in Montparnasse).

Francois-Xavier and his wife Claude shared the idea that sculptures, and more generally, works of art, can have a function. Their entire career was dedicated to giving sculptures a more familiar - less sacrilegious - aspect… maybe even a purpose. We can gaze upon it…and even touch it, open it, sit on it, lay on it, eat it, wear it around one’s neck…

Mother Nature, and more specifically the animal kingdom, was this couple’s inexhaustible playground of shapes and forms recognizable to all. Sheep, monkeys, rhinos, donkeys, camels, frogs, hippopotamuses, cats…all found their way into the artists’ repertory and studio; all were pushed to the limits of Art Déco with large doses of playfulness.

The wise ape corresponds perfectly to this surrealistic and anti-conformist mind-set that makes Lalanne’s sculptures so lifelike.

112

Claude Lalanne (1924 - ) Chaise aux branchettes, 1995 Bronze and brass, edition of 8 79 x 45 x 35 cm - 31.1 x 17.7 x 13.8 in.

Provenance Artist’s studio Public notes Claude Lalanne and her husband François-Xavier Lalanne worked together on sculptures as early as 1956, although they both produced independently.

Claude employed techniques that revisited the Renaissance art of casting forms from life. She then used the molds to produce unparalleled sculptures in cast bronze. Her legacy to the art world was more intimate pieces with a somewhat baroque touch.

To her husband’s incongruous combinations of shapes and functionalities, Claude would add her structures of molded bodies, leaves, apples and cabbage to form unique combinations. Among her works, we find the famous The Man with the cabbage head, The Apple-mouth, Snail with two fingers, as well as many pieces of jewelry, decorative objects, chairs…

Chaise aux branchettes is a bronze piece imitating both leaves and branches: Claude Lalanne’s delicate technique makes the weight of the material disappear, replaced by an illusion that the chair really is made of wood.

114

Alexander Calder (1898 - 1976) Three lights and five blacks, 1956 Signed and dated ‘Calder 56’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 55,9 x 81,3 cm - 22 x 32 in.

Provenance Gift of the artist Talcott and Polly Clapp, Connecticut Private collection, New York Exhibited New York, Perls Galleries, Calder, Feb. 6 - March 10, 1956 New York, Tina Kim Gallery in conjunction with Vintage 20, Alexander Calder and George Nakashima, May 22 - June 28, 2008 Certificate This work is registered in the Calder Foundation Archives under the reference No. A10411 Public notes Calder cherished a childlike style that he strove to reproduce on paper: the fun and dynamic dimension that he was able to transmit through his mobile creation. He also drew on nature’s own natural formations to draw what looks like choreographed ballets. He liked to say that the meaningfulness of his work was linked to the system of the universe; Three lights and five blacks was inspired by the movement of the universe. Wether sculpting or painting, Calder loved to represent various shapes, spheres and circles.

Regardless of where he lived, be it in the United States or France, Alexander Calder’s homes were always located in the countryside; the artist needed a peaceful environment to be at his best.

In Three lights and five blacks, the artist was inspired by the tranquility surrounding him. The geometric forms of his works were directly linked to the phenomena of nature.

116

Alexander Calder (1898 - 1976) Stripes and stripes, 1970 Signed and dated ‘Calder 70’ (centre right) Gouache on paper 74,9 x 109,2 cm - 29.5 x 43 in.

Provenance Perls Galleries, New York Private collection, USA (acquired from the above) Sale: Sotheby’s New York, Contemporary Art (Part 1), Nov. 17, 1999, lot 41 Private collection, UK Exhibited New York, Perls Galleries, Alexander Calder: recent gouaches - early mobiles, Oct 20 - Nov 28, 1970, No.19, ill.

Paris, Galerie Darga & Lansberg, Calder, May 26 - July 30, 2000 literature Perls Galleries, Alexander Calder: recent gouaches - early mobiles, New York, 1970, No.19, ill.

CERTIFICATE This work is registered in the Calder Foundation Archives under the reference No. A02619 Public notes Alexander Calder is both a witness to, and major actor in, the birth of the most radical form of Abstract Art. His influences included pioneers of cold and geometric Abstract Art, embodied in Europe by members of the ‘‘de Stilj’’ movement, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.

This painting dates back to 1970 and coincides with the period when Calder began construction of his house near his studio in Saché, France. The artist wanted a house for everyday, simple living; a place where he could feel happy. Calder liked to enjoy life; he was a cheerful and joyous person.

While living in Saché, Calder participated in the social and economic activity of the region, developing many relationships with important people.

Calder belonged to a group of artists who sought to enhance the awareness of what the members called ‘‘Abstraction-Creation’’: geometric abstraction which really broke with the academic conventions of the period.

Despite his love for abstraction, Calder had a strong surrealistic streak. This led to a close, personal friendship with Miró.

Stripes and stripes was conceived and created in the very workshop where such a joyous atmosphere and feeling of peace prevailed.

118

Tom Wesselmann (1931 - 2004) Nancy scribble, 1983 Oil on canvas 152,4 x 101,6 cm - 60 x 40 in.

Provenance Estate of Tom Wesselmann Public notes In 1962, four exhibitions were organized with four major artists of the time: Andy Warhol, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann.

Tom Wesselmann wanted to break away from abstract schools of art. He decided to try his hand at more traditional themes: nudes, still lifes, interior scenes and portraits. This is how he came to create a variety of series, most notably the Great American nudes and the Still lifes series that made him famous. Wesselmann also tried his hand at collages and superimpositions.

Nancy scribble proves that Wesselmann really did succeed in differentiating himself from the three other artists to whom he was always being associated, thanks, in part, to his great talent as a portraitist.

120

Robert Indiana (1928 - ) Liberty 76, 1975 Inscribed ‘for shepard liou my best’ (lower left corner); signed and dated ‘R Indiana 1975’ (lower right corner) Printed paper collage and acrylic on paper 100,3 x 88,9 cm - 39.5 x 35 in.

Provenance Shepard Liou collection The Greenberg Gallery, St. Louis Marisa del Rey Gallery, Palm Beach C & M Fine Arts, New York Acquired by the previous owner from the above Public notes Robert Indiana, also known as Robert Clark, is an American artist associated with the Pop Art movement.

He takes the everyday symbols of roadside America and weaves them into brilliantly coloured geometric Pop Art. Through his work, Indiana has been an ironic commentator on the American way of life. Both his graphics and paintings have made cultural statements on life and, during the rebellious 1960s, caustic political statements as well.

As we can see with this piece, Indiana wanted to express the celebration of a dream come true in America in 1974: Liberty and Justice for All.

122

Robert Indiana (1928 - ) Love (red/gold), 1966-2002 Stamped with the artist‘s signature, numbered and dated ‘© 1966-2002 R Indiana /6’ (on the inside of the ‘E’) Polychrome aluminium, edition of 6 + 4 AP 91,5 x 91,5 x 45,7 cm - 36 x 36 x 18 in.

Provenance Morgan Art Foundation (acquired directly from the artist) Private collection, Europe Acquired from the above by the present owner Public notes Indiana’s work often consists of bold, simple, iconic images, especially numbers and short words like EAT, HUG, and, his best known example, LOVE. In the beginning, LOVE was designed as a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1964. The artist chose to tilt the letter “O” sideways, a strong reference to the Pop Art movement.

Today, this piece is famous around the world, and exists in all different sizes and colours. Two of the most popular versions are the one standing in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and one in New York City.

The United States Post Office issued an eight-cent stamp in 1973 featuring the image.

124

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) The Prince of Wales, 1982 Signed and dated ‘Andy Warhol 82’ (on the overlap) Synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas 127 x 107 cm - 50 x 42.1 in.

Provenance Private collection Exhibited Padova, Vecchiato New Art Galleries, Andy Warhol: The Bomb, Oct. 12, 2006 - Feb. 17, 2007 Napoli, Maschio Angioino, Warhol Viaggio in Italia, July 20 - Nov. 2, 1996 London, Opera Gallery Literature Vecchiato New Art Galleries, Andy Warhol: The Bomb, Von Drathen, Dorie and Gianluca Ranzi et al., Padova, 2006 Maschio Angioino, Warhol Viaggio in Italia, Mazzotta, Napoli, 1996 Public notes This portrait of Charles, the Prince of Wales, is part of a diptych - the other comprised of the portrait of Diana, the Princess of Wales - created by Warhol a year after the Royal wedding in celebration of the event. It was commissioned by a rich industrialist for the opening of a new club in Hong Kong, of which Warhol was invited to the event as a guest. The original works, which have not been seen since 1982, when they were completed and bought by the private collector, is now acquired directly from the private collection and are up for sale again.

126

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) The Princess of Wales, 1982 Signed and dated ‘Andy Warhol 82’ (on the overlap) Synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas 127 x 107 cm - 50 x 42.1 in.

Provenance Private collection Exhibited Padova, Vecchiato New Art Galleries, Andy Warhol: The Bomb, Oct. 12, 2006 - Feb. 17, 2007 Napoli, Maschio Angioino, Warhol Viaggio in Italia, July 20 - Nov. 2, 1996 London, Opera Gallery Literature Vecchiato New Art Galleries, Andy Warhol: The Bomb, Von Drathen, Dorie and Gianluca Ranzi et al., Padova, 2006 Maschio Angioino, Warhol Viaggio in Italia, Mazzotta, Napoli, 1996 Public notes This portrait of Diana, the Princess of Wales, is part of a diptych - the other comprised of the portrait of Charles, the Prince of Wales - created by Warhol a year after the Royal wedding in celebration of the event. It was commissioned by a rich industrialist for the opening of a new club in Hong Kong, of which Warhol was invited to the event as a guest. The original works, which have not been seen since 1982, when they were completed and bought by the private collector, is now acquired directly from the private collection and are up for sale again.

128

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) Tennessee Williams, circa 1983 Synthetic polymer and silkscreen ink on canvas 50,8 x 40,6 cm - 20 x 16 in.

Certificate The Estate of Andy Warhol has confirmed the authenticity of this work under the reference No. PO 50.832 Public notes Andy Warhol was an American artist born in 1928. He is a major emblematic figure of the international art scene during the second half of the 20th Century.

The themes that stand out most in Warhol’s work are an individual’s power in a consumer society and the theme of death. Like with his portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe or Liz Taylor, his portrait of Tennessee Williams was also completed right after the playwright’s death. The famous dramaturge of contemporary American theater, known as the father of nostalgia and the American Dream, became close friends with Warhol.

They were part of a small clique of young artists that included Liz Taylor and Truman Capote. These friends formed a group of people who mutually appreciated fame and fortune. Famous for his experimentation with silkscreen techniques, Warhol produced the portrait of pal Tennessee in 1983, very affected by his friend’s death.

Silkscreening enabled the artist to reproduce an infinite number of the same portrait, thus allowing the artist to reach a point of aesthetic perfection. One may even say that Warhol is the stereotype of Pop Art. According to the artist, the nature of any image is preserved thanks to a silkscreening procedure that transposes the real image onto canvas.

Towards the end of his life, Warhol used various techniques and esoteric procedures to complete a myriad of celebrity portraits including works dedicated to Michael Jackson and Sylvester Stallone.

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Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987) fish, toy painting series 1983 Synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas 27,9 x 35,2 cm - 11 x 13.9 in.

Provenance The Estate of Andy Warhol and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York Certificate The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. has confirmed the authenticity of this work under the reference no. PA .20.181 Public notes Even though this American artist is most famous for his Pop Art creations, Fish is definitely one of Warhol’s most startling, unique compositions.

A passionate art collector himself, Andy Warhol drew inspiration for many of his pieces from his collection of childhood toys.

In 1982, a Swiss gallery owner commissioned a series entitled Children painting which the artist took great pleasure in completing. Three years later, approximately 100 toys had been ‘revisited’ by Andy Warhol. They were exhibited at children’s eye-level at the Cushing Museum of Art in Newport.

As with Fish, numerous other Pop Art illustrations such as Train or Clockwork panda drummer were specifically produced for this children’s exhibition.

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Keith Haring (1958 - 1990) Untitled, 13 April 1984 Signed and dated ‘© K. Haring APRIL 13, 1984’ (on the overlap) Acrylic on canvas 151,8 x 151,8 cm - 59.8 x 59.8 in.

Provenance Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited Cologne, Galerie Paul Maenz, Keith Haring, May 3-30, 1984 Berlin, DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Private / Corporate: Werke aus der Daimler Kunst Sammlung: Ein Dialog (Private / Corporate; Works from the Daimler Art Collection: A Dialogue), May 28 - July 21, 2002, p. 34 Literature Paul Maenz, Keith Haring at Paul Maenz, Cologne, 1984, p. 5 Galerie Paul Maenz, Ausstellungs-saison (Exhibition Season) 1983-84, Cologne, 1984, p. 13 Germano Celant and Ida Gianelli, Keith Haring, Milan, 1994, p. 37 Private / Corporate: Werke aus der Daimler Kunst: Ein Dialog (Private / Corporate: Works from the Daimler Art Collection: A Dialogue), DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Berlin, 2002, p. 34 Certificate The Keith Haring Studio LLC has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Keith Haring was one of the most celebrated artists of his time. Today everyone knows his incomparable style and repertoire of iconic signs.

During his debut, Haring liked to descend into the New York Subway system to draw on the walls. This led to his being arrested several times. Keith Haring’s work conveyed powerful messages and strong political views. During his career, he continued to fight racism, violence and injustice.

Keith Haring really wanted to shine on the urban culture scene by creating artworks that were like ephemeral ‘‘winks’’ to passersby. This method allowed him access to a wide audience without going the standard museum route. His ‘‘happenings’’ were always a huge success, thanks to a simple line and some easily recognizable symbols.

In 1984 he created Untitled. This work would develop a symbolic colour to his style, linked closely to the world of media. Haring strove to illustrate the many issues dear to his heart. One place where he particularly liked to work was in Harlem, where frescoes are a popular way of denouncing racial and gender biases.

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Fernando Botero (1932 - ) Pic-nic, 2006 Signed and dated ‘Botero 06’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 98 x 136 cm - 38.6 x 53.5 in.

Certificate Fernando Botero has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes The distorted bodies, faces and objects in Botero’s paintings are what lend a particular feeling of harmony to the artist’s work...and also what make him so unique.

Botero’s style is characterized by the round, fat shapes of people and everyday objects. His paintings often seem to be composed so as to perfectly capture the essence and personality of the protagonists, as if frozen in time.

The couple taking an afternoon nap, the food and picnic setting are popular themes that often inspire Botero. The distorted shapes are always burlesque, cheerful. The difference between small and big becomes less important.

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Fernando Botero (1932 - ) Sunday at Castelgandolfo, 2009 Signed and dated ‘Botero 09’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 144 x 207 cm - 56.7 x 81.5 in.

Provenance The artist’s estate Literature Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Fernando Botero, Montevideo, 1998, ill. in colour p. 33 Certificate Fernando Botero has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Fernando Botero was born in 1932 in Medellin, Colombia, a village dotted with churches and convents, brimming with baroque-like figures, shapes and colours. It is his perception of this universe that inspired his lifework.

Botero delves into various themes such as politics, religion, bullfighting, still life…even brothels and prostitution in general. As an ensemble, Botero’s work depicts characters that seem void of feelings. They don’t seem to evoke any particular artistic emotion either…but rather, seem to be the epitome of detached impartiality. Despite attacking difficult subjects in his paintings, Botero employs his unique humour to turn the piece into a success.

Sunday at Castelgandolfo is one of the larger than life paintings he loves to produce. It shows a group of religious dignitaries relaxing during a delicious countryside afternoon. Colours, humour, and intelligence: the essential elements of Fernando Botero’s world are all there.

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Fernando Botero (1932 - ) Rapto de Europa, 2011 Signed and numbered ‘Botero /6’ (on the base) Bronze, edition of 6 60 x 49 x 32 cm - 23.6 x 19.3 x 12.6 in.

Certificate Fernando Botero has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Branching out into three-dimensional art was quite a natural step to take for an artist so singularly dedicated to expressing volume and mass. When painting or sculpting humans or animals, the artist likes to make materials swell into huge shapes. He immobilizes his characters into imperturbable and impenetrable attitudes.

Fernando Botero’s sculptures are often inspired by ancient Egyptian art. One may also notice certain religious references in his work; as such, naked women can be seen as a metaphor of fertility.

Rapto de Europa (the rapt of Europa by Zeus) is based on one of the most famous Greek myths having influenced part of Western culture.

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Fernando Botero (1932 - ) Hombre a caballo, 2005 Signed and numbered ‘Botero’ (on the base) Bronze, edition of 6 + 2 AP 53 x 39 x 25 cm - 20.9 x 15.3 x 9.8 in.

Certificate Fernando Botero has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Sculptures are the natural extensions, or the ‘‘making tangible’’ of Fernando Botero’s pictorial universe. His characters seem larger than life; their voluptuous shapes become palpable, offering what the artist calls a ‘‘poetic alternative reality.’’

There is a ‘‘pre-Columbian’’ style to the artist’s work that echoes his personality. In the 80s, Botero’s sculptural work started to evolve: he began using marble, especially white marble from Italy.

Hombre a caballo is one of the most significant examples of his sculptural production.

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Fernando Botero (1932 - ) Pas de deux, 2004 Signed and dated ‘Botero 04’ (lower right corner) Oil on canvas 139 x 99 cm - 54.7 x 39 in.

Certificate Fernando Botero has confirmed the authenticity of this work Public notes Colombia, Botero’s native country, has a tradition of associating round, chubby shapes with health, prosperity and happiness. South America is often synonymous with a fiesta-like atmosphere, afternoon naps, bright colours and wellbeing.

The artist’s paintings, sculptures and drawings are exhibited and represented in museum collections throughout the world.

In Pas de deux, Botero’s protagonists, despite their roundness, give the impression of being light on their feet and limber. Beauty and love are two key elements in Fernando Botero’s work.

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06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30

Pablo Picasso Nature morte, 13 July 1945 Pablo Picasso Paysage au pin, 15 June 1953 Pablo Picasso Tête de faune, 24 Jan. 1956 Pablo Picasso Picador et fille, 4 June 1960 Pablo Picasso Musicienne et nu assis, 30 Jan. 1968 Pablo Picasso Tête de faune, 12 July 1956 Marc Chagall Dos à dos, 1984 Marc Chagall Les Amoureux au-dessus de Paris, 1974 Marc Chagall Autour du couple, 1975 Marc Chagall Roi David sur fond rose, 1963 Marc Chagall Soleil au-dessus de Vence, circa 1964 Marc Chagall Le Pont Neuf, 1953 - 1954 Marc Chagall Étude pour Le Champs de Mars ou Les Arums au compotier, 1954-1955

32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64

Raoul Dufy Le Cirque, circa 1935 Raoul Dufy Les Jeux de la mer, 1931 Raoul Dufy Le Port du Havre, circa 1905-1906 Raoul Dufy Amphitrite, circa 1925-1938 Raoul Dufy Composition au port, palmier et feuilles d’arum, 1943 Georges Braque Les Soleils, 1946 Georges Braque Le Poisson, 1962 Claude Monet La Rivière Claude Monet Dans la prairie, Vétheuil, 1881 Pierre-Auguste Renoir Portrait of Pierre Renoir à la capeline, 1886 Pierre-Auguste Renoir Portrait de femme (Gabrielle Renard), circa 1912 Pierre Bonnard Dans la rue, deux figures, circa 1906 Auguste Rodin The Thinker, 1881- 1882 / 1998 Henri Matisse Port de Cherbourg, 1918 Henri Matisse Nu au bouquet, 1920 Henri Matisse Femme et bouquets, March 1940 Kees Van Dongen Carrousel, Place Pigalle ou Manège de cochons, circa 1904-1905

66 68 70 72

André Brasilier Neige d’automne, 2010 Moïse Kisling Jeune femme brune au foulard, 1926 Jean Metzinger Miroir et fume-cigarette, circa 1950 Fernand Léger Composition aux fusils sur fond jaune (les deux fusils), 1928

74 76 78 80 82

Fernand Léger Fantaisie sur fond rouge, 1943 Fernand Léger Trouville : le port, 1949 Fernand Léger Les quatre acrobates, 1954 Alberto Giacometti Tête de profil, 1947 Salvador Dalí Rhinocéros cosmique (Chair de poule rhinocérontique), 1956

84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118 120 122 124 126 128 130 132 134 136 138 140 142 144

Joan Miró Untitled, 1972 Joan Miró Personnage, oiseaux, 1971-1976 Joan Miró Femmes dans la nuit, 14 april 1977 Joan Miró Femmes, oiseaux, 10 Sept. 1977 Joan Miró Untitled (Essencies de la terra), 7 Oct. 1968 Joan Miró Femmes et oiseau dans la nuit, 28 Nov. 1946 Jean Arp En songe, 1937 André Lanskoy Les Joies des autres, 1960 Georges Mathieu Hudson bay, 1963 Bernard Buffet Le Cirque, la parade, 1968 Bernard Buffet Villa normande, 1991 Bernard Buffet Papillon vert, 1998 Yves Klein Victoire de Samothrace, 1962-1973 Arman Untitled, 1972 François-Xavier Lalanne Singe avisé, 2005 Claude Lalanne Chaise aux branchettes, 1995 Alexander Calder Three lights and five blacks, 1956 Alexander Calder Stripes and stripes, 1970 Tom Wesselmann Nancy scribble, 1983 Robert Indiana Liberty 76, 1975 Robert Indiana Love (red/gold), 1966-2002 Andy Warhol The Prince of Wales, 1982 Andy Warhol The Princess of Wales, 1982 Andy Warhol Tennessee Williams, circa 1983 Andy Warhol fish, toy painting series 1983 Keith Haring Untitled, 13 April 1984 Fernando Botero Pic-nic, 2006 Fernando Botero Sunday at Castelgandolfo, 2009 Fernando Botero Rapto de Europa, 2011 Fernando Botero Hombre a caballo, 2005 Fernando Botero Pas de deux, 2004

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